The brick mastabas were carefully cemented externally, and the layers bound together internally by fine sand poured into the interstices. Stone mastabas, on the contrary, present a regularity in the decoration of their facings alone; in nine cases out of ten the core is built of rough stone blocks, rudely cut into squares, cemented with gravel and dried mud, or thrown together pell-mell without mortar of any kind. The whole building should have been orientated according to rule, the four sides to the four cardinal points, the greatest axis directed north and south; but the masons seldom troubled themselves to find the true north, and the orientation is usually incorrect.* * Thus the axis of the tomb of Pirsenû is 17° east of the magnetic north. In some cases the divergence is only 1° or 2°, more often it is 6°, 7°, 8°, or 9°, as can be easily ascertained by consulting the work of Mariette. The doors face east, sometimes north or south, but never west. One of these is but the semblance of a door, a high narrow niche, contrived so as to face east, and decorated with grooves framing a carefully walled-up entrance; this was for the use of the dead, and it was believed that the ghost entered or left it at will. The door for the use of the living, sometimes preceded by a portico, was almost always characterized by great simplicity. Over it is a cylindrical tympanum, or a smooth flagstone, bearing sometimes merely the name of the dead person, sometimes his titles and descent, sometimes a prayer for his welfare, and an enumeration of the days during which he was entitled to receive the worship due to ancestors. They invoked on his behalf, and almost always precisely in the same words, the “Great God,” the Osiris of Mendes, or else Anubis, dwelling in the Divine Palace, that burial might be granted to him in Amentît, the land of the West, the very great and very good, to him the vassal of the Great God; that he might walk in the ways in which it is good to walk, he the vassal of the Great God; that he might have offerings of bread, cakes, and drink, at the New Year’s Feast, at the feast of Thot, on the first day of the year, on the feast of Ûagaît, at the great fire festival, at the procession of the god Mînû, at the feast of offerings, at the monthly and half-monthly festivals, and every day. [Illustration: 008.jpg TETINIÔNKHÛ, SITTING BEFORE THE FUNERAL REPAST] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph of the original monument which is preserved in the Liverpool Museum; cf. Gatty, _Catalogue of the Mayer Collection;_ I. Egyptian Antiquities, No. 294, p. 45. The chapel is usually small, and is almost lost in the great extent of the building.* It generally consists merely of an oblong chamber, approached by a rather short passage.** * Thus the chapel of the mastaba of Sabu is only 14 ft. 4 in. long, by about 3 ft. 3 in. deep, and that of the tomb of Phtahshopsisû, 10 ft. 4 in. by 3 ft. 7 in.