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.