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Scene: Payment of tribute. Súdanî men bearing rings of gold, logs of ebony, panther-skins, apes, etc.

[Northern Egyptian Gallery, Bay 13, No. 520.]

leads to an unfinished passage, its entrance being about 150 feet below the entrance to the first staircase; the total length of the tomb is about 700 feet. The walls of the corridors and of most of the chambers are decorated with hieroglyphic texts and vignettes which illustrate mythological legends and the funerary ceremonies, all painted in bright colours, and on the roof of the great hall are painted lists of the thirty-six Dekans and other stars, and several figures of solar and stellar gods. The Tombs of the Kings were all

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Scene: Servants of a high official bearing offerings to the tomb. [Northern Egyptian Gallery, Bay 12, No. 517.]

built on practically one and the same plan; the modifications which are found in the details are due partly to structural difficulties, and partly to the variation in the length of the time which was devoted to their making. They cover a period of about 550 years, i.e., B.C. 1600-1050. At the entrances to some of the tombs of nobles and high officials gardens were laid out and trees planted, and these were, of course, maintained out of the endowments of the tombs.

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Under the XXVIth dynasty attempts were made to reproduce tombs after the plans of the XIXth dynasty, and a few very remarkable tombs, e.g., that of PețaAmen-ȧpt at Thebes, were the result. The decoration was, however, inferior, and the scribes who drafted the texts for the walls contented themselves with making extracts from the old funerary compositions, and invented few that were wholly new.

The poor were buried in shallow graves made in the desert, or in caves and hollows in the mountains. Some of the caves in the Theban hills are literally filled with skulls and bones and the remains of badly made mummies, and the same may be said of several "mummy pits," in many parts of Egypt, which were the common property of the neighbouring towns. Among such remains are found cheap porcelain scarabs and poorly moulded figures of the gods, and sometimes coarse papyrus sandals, which prove that the equipment of the poor for their journey to the Other World was cheap and meagre.

Tomb Equipment. To describe here in detail all the varieties of objects which may be fittingly grouped under this head is

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General view of the Sarcophagus of King Nekht-Heru-Hebit, B.C. 378, engraved with scenes and texts from the Book of What is in the Other World, and selections from the Book of the Praises of Ra.

[Southern Egyptian Gallery, Bay 25, No. 923.]

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