mastaba
Americannoun
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an ancient Egyptian tomb made of mud brick, rectangular in plan with sloping sides and a flat roof.
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(in Islamic countries) a fixed bench, especially one of stone.
noun
Etymology
Origin of mastaba
First recorded in 1595–1605, mastaba is from the Arabic word maṣṭabah
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Originally, it was intended to be merely a stone mastaba.
From Textbooks • Apr. 19, 2023
One of its two big monuments, “Complex One,” the very first segment of “City” that Heizer built, can bring to mind an immense mastaba or altar.
From Seattle Times • Aug. 21, 2022
Another, a mastaba, or flat-topped pyramid, made of more than 300,000 oil drums, was to be built in Abu Dhabi as Christo’s only permanent large-scale work.
From New York Times • May 31, 2020
Playing his educated hunch, Professor Emery dug into the desert and discovered another buried mastaba.
From Time Magazine Archive
The names, Sarah, Bruce, Rube, were familiar...Ages ago, in time well outside the mastaba, they had heard these names—in a classroom, on a school bus...
From "From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" by E.L. Konigsburg
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
