Funerary chapel

Of ancient Egypt we all know the pyramids, the burial places of the Pharaohs. But their family members and highest-ranking subjects found their final resting-place in so-called mastabas: big, rectangular sepulchral monuments. Mastaba is the Arabic word for bench, and these sepulchral monuments are indeed similar to the clay benches in front of Egyptian village houses.
In a mastaba the chapel was the only accessible room. The mastaba chapel of the high-ranking court official Hetepherakhet in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden is complete and dates from c. 2400 B.C. In those days relief art was at its peak. This chapel features some fine examples of this art form. The mastaba, measuring 25 metres in length, 13 metres in width and 5 metres in height, was excavated in the 19th century by the Frenchman A. Mariette. The offering chapel measures 4.75 metres in length and 1.60 metres in width, but in the museum it has been reconstructed on a somewhat larger scale.
An inscription in beautiful, sunk hieroglyphs tells us something about the ancient Egyptians that forces us to adjust our image of a slave-driving nation: ‘I have had this tomb built as a totally new one, without taking anything from anybody. The workmen who worked on it were extremely thankful to God for this work. They did their labour in exchange for bread, beer, linen, oil and wheat. Not a single one of them was forced to do this labour, for God loves justice.’