A Shaft and chamber tomb is a type of chamber tomb used by some ancient peoples for burial of the dead. They consist of a shaft dug into the outcrops of rock with a square or round chamber excavated at the bottom where the dead were placed.
Examples include those at Xemxija in Malta which are Neolithic and Dayeh-va-dokhtar tombs in Fars province of Iran. They were also employed by the Ancient Egyptians. The late pre-Classic and early Classic Era cultures of west Mexico (what are now the states of Colima, Nayarit, and Jalisco) used these kind of tombs and much of what little is known about these cultures is known from art objects found in these tombs. As a result, these early West Mexico cultures are sometimes referred to as the "shaft-and-chamber culture".
Famous quotes containing the words shaft and, shaft, chamber and/or tomb:
““It’s hard to tell you how I managed it.
When I saw the shaft had me by the coat,
I didn’t try too long to pull away,
Or fumble for my knife to cut away,
I just embraced the shaft and rode it out....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,—
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire,
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;—”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)