At the sides of Cheope’s pyramids, excluding the northern part, there are besides the queens’ smaller pyramids, many mastaba tombs destined to the royal family’s members, to the high functionaries of the state and to the dignitaries of the cult. They belong to the IV, to the V and to the VI dynasty.
The mastaba, which is a pit dug in the rock that ends in the deepness widening into a room where the dead person’s body was put, had on the surface area a superstructure, in a parallelepiped shape with tapered walls, first compact, it was changed many times until it became a group of rooms.
They have a chapel, used for the cult and the daily offers, that first was outside the oriental wall of the tomb. The walls of the rooms were decorated with scenes about the dead functionary’s charge. From here, the great historical value, in fact, thanks to these representations, we have been able to know about the ancient Egyptians’ institutions and life.
The mastaba of the V and of the VI dynasty, those of Qar and Idu in the north end of the great oriental necropolis of Cheope’s pyramid, are of an irregular kind, because the superstructure (now almost vanished) seems it must have been an enclosed area with a rocky chapel accessible by a stair. The first room with pillars that precedes the place for the offers, presents along the southern wall a line of statues in high relief lined up in an only niche, with a protective and substituting function for the dead person, to assure his survival.
Even the Idu mastaba presents the same abundance of sculptural decorations: in the rooms for the offers, excavated in the rock, there are six statues inside single niches, with architraves and jambs with the dead person’s name and title written, and the funeral stand with the low part dug into a niche that keeps an unusual representation of the dead person, in half-bust, with his hands stretched out toward the offering table which is before him.

Detail of the relief on the stand in the Idu mastaba. The dead person is seen, who was “scribe of the royal letters” and “at the head of the scribes for the servants” assigned to the temple properties, before the offering table, sitting on a chair, under which is represented small, his wife Meretites.