the cattle, the feeding of the fowls, and workmen in every line engaged in their labour. You see shoe-makers cutting and sewing the sandals, glassmakers blowing away at the fusing pasty, carpenters and cabinetmakers planing and shaping the sarcophagus, the bedstead and the tables of the Double, sculptors dressing and polishing the stone for the statues, copper-smiths, silver-smiths and armourers, modelling the posts, shaping the vases and fashioning the trinkets and forging the battle-axes and poniards.

You find there bakers and pastry-cooks with their ovens and kneading-troughs, butchers slaughtering and cutting the animals for the sacrifice, gardeners cultivating flowers and fruits. One and all of these are endowed with the same life as the Double. The portraiture is not so much of the assets of the department of the tombs as of the Doubles of such assets.

The servants and workmen shadowed on the walls are the Doubles of such servants When the visitors retire from the chapel and there is nothing to disturb the solemn stillness, the Double comes out of his chamber to superintend the operations of the workmen just as it was his wont in life. At once the whole scene is very lively. Every shadow on the wall is animated as by magic, the workmen and their work. The pictures are quickened into life and do their best to win the approbation of their master who is looking on.

The Double takes his place by the side of his good woman, surrounded by his children and domestics, under the shade afforded by a light canopy erected in the middle of the garden. He feels that he is quite at home. The farm-servants depasture the cattle, pamper the birds and gather the vintage. He inhales the fragrance of the lotus, that emblem of life, and receives

bouquets of the same presented to him in compliment. The Double does not care to keep company with the spirit in the many peregrinations of the latter's career. He prefers a sedentary life in his mountain home, very like that of his by-gone days, and continues to take an unfailing interest in the same pursuits and delights. He is therefore pictured as pursuing the game in the desert or the swamps, inviting his friends to the lusty cheer, hearkening the music of the concert or regarding the rhythmic movement of the dance. The similitude of these environments is entirely of a piece with the phantasmal life of the master of this home. In this chapel, so decorated, the priest of the sacred chapter and the descendants of the deceased meet together on the days set apart for the ceremonies of the funeral cult. They are duly received by the dead one or, at least, his shadowy likeness, which is just as good. If this miniature has vanished, the visitors know that there are more supports enclosed in the wall to which the sacrifice could address itself. Often-times, it may happen that they are entirely lost to view in the brickwork, but there is a narrow aperture in the wall to mark the location. The prayers are recited into this orifice and the fumes of incense are wafted into it and both are believed to be passed on to the Double who has retired into his seclusion.

So far was this idea of veri-similitude pushed, that we often find, preserved in the caskets, little figures of wood or stone, of clay or lacquer in mummy form, carrying a mattock on one shoulder and a sack of grain thrown over the other. These are among the other supports of the Double, now identified with Osiris, cultivating the celestial soil. They are named Oushepti (sureties) in the texts.

VII.

At

In a later age their signification changed. They came to be regarded as no more than servitors of the dead man, praying and working for their master of other times. Let us look at the arrangement in the chapel. On the other side of the stèle designed as a false door, a cavity opens itself, the private apartment of the Double, designated in the ritual as the chamber of gold. One could descend into it. It is a vertical excavation in the native rock, faced with rubble or raw bricks. the bottom opens a lobby, through which it is impossible to pass except on all fours. It leads to the funeral chamber, properly so called, of average dimensions. At the period of which we are speaking, the walls of the chamber were left without decorations. No inscriptions, no bas-relief, no paintings. Only the sarcophagus appears in the middle with a few jars placed around on the ground. We now know precisely the detail of the life led by the Double in his new home. It did not differ from that of the Egyptian squire, with his extensive demesnes and liegemen, He has his droves of cattle and his table is sumptuously provided. You are led to think that in those representations is comprised the biography in pictograph of the Double. For the name and designation of the dead one are mentioned, a painting of his likeness on earth, in all his opulence and grandeur appears. It should not be forgotten, however, that all this is meant for a representation of the ideal life to be lived in the outer world, the sincere aspiration of every Egyptian.

These paintings have been explained on the principle of mimetic magic, at the base of which is the notion that like produces like, the idea operating to generate he actual. This is about the most probable solution

that could be given of the belief underlying the religious. thought of the ancient Egyptians in this matter.

When you see on the walls of the tomb the pictorial representation of a certain degree of opulence, you are not to understand by it that the deceased had enjoyed that opulence in life. It is really the riches he wishes to enjoy on the other side of the grave, what the survivors wish for him and what they expect their descendants to wish for them. The ultimate goal of the wishes of all was the dignified rest of the over-lord, retired into his grave, rich and puissant; and, if the same could not be attained by all, every one might For, was not the life on the other side only a continuation of the present, with but a touch of idealism to relieve the distant prospect.

at least hope for it.

The stèle in the tomb, designed in the form of a false door, is covered with an inscription reciting an invocation to Anubis, ( कालभैरवः) the conductor of souls, the jackal guardian of the Infernal region. This god is required to provide a good tomb for the dead, in the great west and to pass on to him the offerings presented on the many sacred days. Other divinities are also mentioned, sometimes, Thoth and above all Khem the generative principle of Ra. This is all the evidence of dogma that one finds in the sepultures of the period of the Memphite empire. In several chapels, besides you do not meet with any holy images or paintings of a religious act. But you see the depiction of some exequia rites rendered for the departed Osirian, without the addition of a ritualistic formula of adoration or oblation. In some chapels, the invocation, where it appears, is a conditional one. An oblation is presented to the god who is charged with providing for the Double the good things of which he may have need.

The supplication for a decent home for the Double in the west is not to be understood as bearing any reference to the terrestrial tomb but to an imaginary one in the new country, an ideal one which would be the double of that on the earth and in which the paintings traced on the walls of the earthly tomb would be materialised in realistic form through eternity.

In brief the life out there is to be exactly indentical with the one here, with all its felicity and more, but devoid of any religious or moral impulse. Nevertheless, the Double of the dead one is now accounted a divinity. He has his cult. He receives his sacrifices. There are priests appropriated to his service. And yet, the survivors have nothing to expect from him ; and in his turn, he exercises absolutely no influence on their wellbeing. All the above did not apply to the Pharaoh. For the king of the land was of divine extraction. He was the god incarnate in human form and, therefore, it followed that the close of his career could find no parallel in that of the ordinary mortals over whom he ruled His remains were laid under a pyramid of varying proportions. And while the sepulchres of the other dead do not show any inscriptions, on the stones of the chamber in which the mummy of the Pharaoh reposes are inscribed whole chapters of a ritual which, having been transcribed on papyrus in later times, took the name of the Book of the Dead.

About sixty-six of these pyramids have been classified. The idea that dominated the construction of these huge fabrics was the same: the preservation of the body from decay and destruction. Only, the architectural effort was proportioned to the rank of the monarch. And yet, there is nothing to be found in these piles to recall anything of mundane life, or to suggest