False door

[3] The ancient Egyptians believed that the false door was a threshold between the worlds of the living and the dead and through which a deity or the spirit of the deceased could enter and exit.

A semi-cylindrical drum, carved directly above the central panel, was used in imitation of the reed-mat that was used to close real doors.

The configuration of the false door, with its nested series of doorjambs, is derived from the niched palace façade and its related slab stela, which became a common architectural motif in the early Dynastic period.

[8] During the nearly one hundred and fifty years spanning the reigns of the sixth Dynasty pharaohs Pepi I, Merenre, and Pepi II, the false door motif went through a sequential series of changes affecting the layout of the panels, allowing historians to date tombs based on which style of false door was used.

[11] After the First Intermediate Period, the popularity of the false doors diminished, being replaced by stelae as the primary surfaces for writing funerary inscriptions.

[13] The side panels usually are covered in inscriptions naming the deceased along with their titles, and a series of standardized offering formulas.

[17] These false doors, apparently resulting from a strong Eastern influence,[17]: 11  usually appear on the back wall of the main chamber, and are represented by horizontal and vertical frames and a projecting lintel.

[16]: 137–139  Sometimes the door is topped with painted or carved U-shaped bull horns, inscribed inside each other in a variable number.

It has been argued that these represents the passageway to the afterlife that definitively separate the deceased from the living loved ones, also preventing a possible return.