What were the mastabas like in the old kingdom?

Answer 1

'Mastaba's were ancient Egyptian mud-brick tombs, with a rectangular base and sloping sides and flat roof : Their basic design was adapted [except for the flat roof !] in the giant pyramids raised to entomb the Egyptian Pharaohs.

Answer 2

All the above are true, but don't answer your question:
What were they like?
They were the size of modest house, with generally two rooms - an entry room with wall paintings and a low ceiling, and an inner room with wall paintings and a 5'X5' hole in the floor that was a shaft. The shaft drops down 20-30 feet to side tunnels hewn in the stone. The side tunnels lead to rooms that were the final resting places of those wealthy enough to afford the privilege (the poor folk were "buried" in large clay pots that were set out in the desert.
Today, the mastabas are long empty, but the sands around them are littered with beads and terracotta dolls that the "pot-buried" folks had with them. When the pots shattered over time (many thanks to the efforts of Napoleon's army), the comparatively worthless dolls and beads scattered and can be found even now.
If you see the step pyramid just south of Cairo, it is pretty evident that this was the "intermediate" version between the single-story mastaba and the full-blown pyramid. Stacking mastabas like children's blocks yielded the "perfect" pyramid shape - roughly the same shape as an equal pile of loose sand, and therefore very stable.
Cheers.

Answer 3

The word ‘mastaba’ comes from the Arabic for bench since the early excavators thought they looked like local benches. We do not know what the Egyptians called them. Made from mud brick or occasionally stone, these giant mounds covered burial chambers that were often dug deep into the ground and had to be reached through long shafts.

Pyramids developed from mastabas and, theory has it, the early step pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara was originally a mastaba that had successively smaller square slabs built around it.

There are thousands of mastabas all over Egypt, many of them rich with expert wall paintings. Unlike the paintings in pyramids that only portray court life, these paintings are a huge source of information on everyday life.

Answer 4

MASTABA (Arab. for " bench "), in Egyptian architecture, the term given to the rectangular tombs in stone with raking sides and a flat roof. There were three chambers inside. In one the walls were sometimes richly decorated with paintings and had a low bench of stone in them on which incense was burnt. The second chamber was either closed, with holes pierced in the wall separating it from the first chamber, or entered through a narrow passage through which the fumes of the incense passed; this chamber contained the serdab or figure of the deceased. A vertical well-hole cut in the rock descended to a third chamber in which the mummy was laid.