Saqqara - Mastaba of Ptahhotep

The entrance to the Mastaba of Ptahhotep, on the north side, leads into a corridor, the walls of which are covered with interesting sketches for reliefs and unfinished reliefs (right) and empty royal cartouches (left). To the right is a large square hall with four pillars, from which a door at the southeast corner leads through a vestibule into the offering room, with mural reliefs which are among the highest achievements of Egyptian art at its zenith, some of them surpassing even the reliefs in the Mastaba of Ti. The colors are well preserved. The roof of the chamber is decorated with imitation palm trunks.

In the doorway: servants with votive gifts. North wall: above the door, Ptahhotep at his morning toilet, with grayhounds under his chair and his pet monkey held by a servant; in front of him harpists and singers, dwarfs stringing beads (upper row); officials seated on the ground (next two rows); harpists and fluteplayers, with a singer beating time (bottom row); to the left of the door, servants with votive gifts, sacrificial animals being slaughtered. West wall: at each end a false door; the right hand one is highly elaborate, perhaps representing a palace facade; on the left hand one the dead man is depicted sitting in a chapel (below, right) and in a litter carried by servants (left); in front is the offering table. The reliefs depict Ptahhotep (on the left) at a richly furnished table; in front of him (top row) priests making offerings and (three lower rows) servants with various votive gifts; above, a list of the dishes.

On the south wall is a similar scene: the dead man at the funeral banquet; in front of him (top row) peasant women with gifts (mutilated); second row, cutting up of sacrificial animals; two bottom rows, servants with various gifts. The finest and most interesting reliefs are on the east wall. To the right the dead man is seen inspecting gifts and tribute from "the estates of the north and the south"; top row, boys wrestling and seven boys running (the first having his arms tied); second and third rows, the spoils of the chase, with four men pulling two cages containing lions, another with young gazelles in a litter, another with a cage of hares and hedgehogs; fourth row, herdsmen and cattle in the fields, the calves being tethered to pegs; next two rows, cattle being brought for inspection (note the herdsman with a broken leg leading a bull with a neck ornament); bottom row, poultry. To the left the dead man contemplates "all the pleasant diversions that take place throughout the country"; top row, a herd of cattle being driven through a marsh, and men gathering papyrus, tying it in bundles and carrying it away; second row, boys playing; third row, the vintage (vines growing on trellises, a man watering them, others gathering the grapes, treading them and pressing them in sacks); fourth and fifth rows, animal life and hunting in the desert; sixth row, men working in the marshes, gutting fish, making rope and constructing papyrus boats; seventh row, men catching birds with nets, putting them in crates and carrying them away; bottom row, peasants in boats on the Nile, with plants and fish (some ofthe peasants are fighting). In the boat on the left is a sculptor named Ni-ankh-ptahwith a boy giving him a drink probably the artist responsible for the reliefs in the tomb.

From the pillared hall a door in the west wall leads into the offering chamber of Akhethotep, Ptahhotep's son. To the right and left the dead man is shown at a banquet, with servants bringing him votive gifts. On the west wall is a false door with a large offering table.