deceased on earth. Here at stated seasons the family would come, bringing in the first-fruits of their garden, cattle, the best of their poultry, beer, cakes of home-made bread, and herbs, and bouquets of lotus blossoms; with their own hands they piled the altar, burned the incense, and poured the drinks and essences, "at the festivals of the beginning of the year, the opening of the year, the increase of the year, the diminution of the year, and the close of the year; at the great festival, at the festival of the great burning, at the festival of the lesser burning, the five intercalary days, at the festival of bread-making, at harvest time, at the twelve monthly and twelve half-monthly festivals"—that is to say roughly, about once a week, for the Egyptian month of thirty days was divided in three weeks, each of ten days length. The dead thus remained in closest connection with the living, eating and drinking at the funeral repast and affording them protection in return.

And this is a specimen of the funeral song sung during the Eighteenth Dynasty on one of these anniversaries, to keep alive the remembrance of the deceased patriarch, who sits with his sister and wife, while their son and daughter are standing by their side; the words were written before the Hebrews left Egypt, and have been stored away in dry darkness till now: 1-"Our great one is truly at rest, his good charge is accomplished. Men pass away ever since. the days of old, and youths come in their stead, like as the dawn. reappears every morning and the sunset fades every evening: thus men are ever begetting and women ever conceiving. Every nostril inhaleth once the breezes of dawn, but all born of women go down to their places. Make a good day, O holy father! let the odours and the oils stand before thy nostril. We have set wreaths of lotus on the arms and the bosom of thy sister and wife, she who dwelleth in thy heart, sitting beside thee; so to-day let song and music be before thy face. Let us mind us of joy till cometh the day of our pilgrimage, when we draw near the land that loveth silence. Make a good day, thou patriarch perfect and pure of hands. Make a good day, O holy father, pure of hands. No works or buildings in Egypt can avail to stay man's passing away; his place knoweth him no more, but his name will be glorious to all posterity, for he has gone to the realm of eternity. Those who have magazines full of bread to spend, even they encounter the hour of a last end, and at that moment valour and riches melt away. So mind thee (the harper turns to the friends), mind thee of the

1 Records of the Past, vol. vi. p. 127–130.

day when thou shalt start for the land to which one goeth to return not thence. Good for thee then will it be to have lived an honest life; therefore be just and hate transgressions, for he who loveth justice will be blessed. The coward and the bold neither can fly the grave, the friendless and the proud are both alike. Then of thy bounty give abundantly to him whose field is barren; love truth, and thy name shall be glorious among thy posterity for evermore, and thou too shalt attain a happy old age."

The pictures on the walls of the tomb, in which the deceased is with his servants at work, guaranteed the performance of what they represented, and by the operation of religious magic became spiritual realities to the double in the Elysian fields; their doubles took his double to hunt, and fed, pleased, and clothed him as of yore. This double was a thing of semi-human needs, appetites and humours. As in life the man required meat and drink, clothing and attendance, so the Ka, being but an appearance, must have appearances of food and wine, of garments and servants, for his well-being in the tomb. And in order that there never might be wanting a constant succession of these feasts even after the family of the occupant of the tomb died out, the tombs were endowed with foundations of land and revenue for priests to perform these rites "for ever." To each necropolis guilds of mass-priests were attached who officiated at each endowed tomb in turn.

2. The second part of an Egyptian tomb was the "ingle," or nook (serdab). This was generally on the south, sometimes on the north, seldom on the west side of the hall. In here were placed the life-like representations of the deceased in wood or stone. These were so many artificial supports as it were to perpetuate the life of the double, which was in continual danger of evaporation: upon them the impalpable Ka or wraith might extend itself. They were "counterfeit presentments," for which, when living, the dead had given sittings to skilled artists. The rich man multiplied his chances of immortality by multiplying his Ka statues. His tomb might be violated, his statues overthrown; but if only one of these representative bodies escaped, his Ka or "double" would be safe. As many as twenty have been found in one sepulchre. In a later age the Ka statue which had been as large as life under the old Empire, dwindled to a little porcelain statuette coated with blue or green. glaze.

In one of the tombs at Thebes of the Twentieth Dynasty, a letter from a man to his dead wife has been found tied on to her statue, by

which means he had transmitted it to her in the spirit world. The Chinese transmit letters to the dead by burning them, and the Catholics in France at the present day send letters to the Virgin and Saints, through the medium of their priests, and the Moslems to Abraham and the patriarchs by dropping them into their tombs. The Egyptians did it by magic formula. Most of these nooks were entirely closed, but some were walled in with only a narrow slit left from this "ingle," or nook, into the hall, in order that the Ka might inhale the smell of the refreshing offerings, the meats of the feast, the libations and the flowers, and hear all that went on in the front hall, the music, songs, and conversation. The walls of these inglenooks were always plain.

3. The pit leading down to the vault in which the mummy lay. In order to be more inaccessible these were often approached through the roof of the hut, and usually were cut sheer down perpendicular into the rock beneath for thirty-nine feet or so; sometimes, however, they went off at a slope to the west, as it was in the direction of the setting sun that the soul would cross the threshold of the other world. At the end of this pit was the little vault, which could only be approached down the shaft of the pit by the use of ropes, and in here the coffin of the mummy was deposited, usually in a line with the chamber above. The mummy was usually placed

in a wooden coffin with a human face, and this was inclosed in an oblong stone coffin. In it there was nothing else but the wooden or alabaster pillow, or head-rest, the same as the dead man had used for sleeping on in life, (and which was like the wooden head-rests in Japan and Fiji,) and half a dozen little drinking-cups. On the floor of the vault, round the coffin, are sometimes found scattered a few beef-bones, the remains of the funeral sacrifices, and a few vases which had contained water. The coffin once in, the vault was built up and the pit filled in with stones, earth, and sand, and made as inaccessible as possible.

These three parts of an Egyptian tomb, then, from the nature of the belief concerning the dead, were always necessary, and are always and invariably found. In the case of the kings of the Ancient Empire, whose bodies unembalmed were buried in the vault at the

TOMB AT ABYDOS (EXTERIOR).

end of the long pit or shaft that led away under the pyramid, the hall for offerings and prayers was outside, slightly detached, but always at the east side of each pyramid, and there their foundations are to this day: and the so-called "air-holes" in the heavy stonework of the pyramid would allow their doubles in the interior central chamber, to hear and take part in all that went on outside.

At Abydos, as the natural rock is not deep enough for the pit and vault to be cut downwards, as in the tombs at Geezeh or on the plateau behind Memphis, the mummy had to be deposited nearer the surface of the soil, and so instead of remaining flat-roofed, the hutlike tomb became a small pyramid sixteen or nineteen feet high, built of brick and stuccoed. This contained under its roof in one, the vault for the coffin and the ingle-nook for the statues, which

however still communicated by slits as before with the outer hall, which was then built as an exterior chamber in front of the pyramid. The door of these halls at Memphis always opened towards the east or rising sun; for it was the opening through which one day their inmates would regain the light. At Abydôs the door opened towards the south, that is towards the noonday sun.

SECTION SHOWING INTERIOR OF THE SAME, AND REARRANGEMENT OF PIT AND MUMMY CHAMBER NECESSITATED BY THE SOIL.

Again, in the same way as the great pyramids had been a grandiose development above ground connected with the vault, so the cavecut pits at Thebes were an underground development connected with this same part, for the great kings of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Dynasties. The nature of the burial

ground there on the side of the Libyan hills furrowed by ravines lent itself to this development; and the oratory chapel and receptionhall owing to the same configuration of the hills had to be separated from them, and became the elaborate Temple on the plain in front. In the tombs of the ordinary citizens at Thebes the coffin was either deposited in a brick cavity below or else in a cave in the rock,