Wooden stele of Nesui. Painted with scenes representing the deceased and his soul, with its shadow, adoring Ra and his gods, and Osiris and his gods. The supports of the stele are in the form of the mythological stairway to heaven. On the top of it is the figure of Nesui's soul in the form of a man-headed hawk, which suggests that the stele formed the resting-place of the soul when it visited the tomb. XXIInd dynasty. B.M. No. 8468.

Horizons which are found in Chapter XV of the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead. The text reads:

17-ATY

ঃ

1.

॥

(1) "The Osiris Nesui, the truth-speaker, born of the lady of the house, Takureheb, the truth-speaker, says in paying adoration to the Lord of Eternity :-Hail (or homage) to thee, Ra-Her-ȧakhutiKheperȧ (2) the self-created god, twice beautiful in thy rising in the horizon. [He] illumines the Two Lands (i.e., Egypt) with his beams. All the gods rejoice [when] they see the King (3) in the heavens. The Mistress of the Hour (i.e., the guiding goddess) is upon thy head, she makes her place before thee. The White Crown and the Red Crown are stablished in thy boat.1 Thoth is stablished (4) in the front of thy boat. All thine enemies have been destroyed. The gods who dwell in the Tuat come forth with bowings to meet thee and to see thy (5) beautiful form. Let me come before thee with (?) those who exult in thee to see thy Disk every day, never suffering any repulse whatsoever."

It is important to note that the soul of the deceased, in the form of a painted wooden man-headed hawk, with a gilded face, is perched on the top of the stele of Nesui. There seems to be little doubt that the stele was regarded as the place on which the soul alighted when it went to the tomb to visit the body that it had formerly occupied, and, as the stele represented a door, that the soul passed through it at will. In fact, the stele appears to have formed the resting-place of the soul whenever it was pleased to remain on the earth to hold converse with the Ka of which, in some respects, it must have been

1 Read "on thy brow scribe did not erase his mistake.

must be a mistake for

but the

thought by the Egyptians to be a counterpart. The two pedestals of this stele, each with six steps, suggest that the stele itself was regarded as the throne of the soul.

Men of high rank and wealthy Egyptians arranged for large sepulchral tablets to be placed in their tombs as a matter of course, but humbler folk had to content themselves with small stelae, which are often badly made and poorly painted and inscribed with texts containing many mistakes. The greater number of these smaller stelae were provided not by those whose names they bear, but by their kinsfolk and friends, who were anxious that their dead relatives should not want for funerary offerings of food and drink and apparel. Such stelae represent the deceased adoring and praying to Osiris, who is seated and who holds the whip and crook. The inscription is always short, and reads, “May he (i.e., Osiris) give offerings and divine food in abundance,"

as on the the overseer of the workmen

In a few cases some form of the Sun-god appears instead of Osiris, and in one instance we have Ptaḥ, the Lord of Maat (B.M. 8497). The blue-glazed porcelain plaque which was made for Àmenemȧpt,

4

"a scribe and overseer of the offerings of the Lord of the Two Lands" (B.M. 6133), is a very fine example of the votive stele of the XXth or XXIst dynasty.

FOUNDATION DEPOSITS

AMONG the ceremonies that were performed when the foundation. was laid of a temple, or pyramid, or fortress, was the deposit, in a secure and secret part of it, of a series of pieces of each material that was used in the construction of the building. And the founder's name was usually cut or stamped on each piece. The deposit that Rameses II placed in the foundation of one of his buildings at Thebes included models of his bricks, of which a specimen has come down to us, viz., one in green-glazed faïence. The brick measures 144 inches by 74 inches by 2 inches, and on the obverse and reverse are the king's prenomen and nomen in cartouches

surmounted by disk and plumes, M. On the edges are painted

in black the king's Horus-, Nebti- and Ra-names and some of his titles, e.g., Meri-Maat, Meri-neteru, etc. (B.M. 49234). Examples of slabs of stone are B.M. 29951 and 29952. A foundation deposit from a temple built by Psammetichus I at Tall Dafannah (Daphnae, Tahpanhes) in the Eastern Delta included a rectangular faïence plaque inscribed

a mud

Sepulchral stele of Plêïnôs, a "reader," sculptured with Alpha and Omega, the Christian Cross and Egyptian ankhs. VIIIth or IXth century A.D. B.M. No. 679.

Sepulchral stele of John, a monk, who died on the 5th day of Phamenoth in the 14th year of an Indiction. VIIIth or IXth century A.D. B.M. No. 665.