The earthly goods of the gods and of the dead were mostly in solid stone.  I have elsewhere described the little funerary obelisks, the altar bases, the statues, and the tables of offerings found in tombs of the ancient empire.  These tables were made of alabaster and limestone during the Pyramid period, of granite or red sandstone under the Theban kings, and of basalt or serpentine from the time of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.  But the fashions were not canonical, all stones being found at all periods.  Some offering-tables are mere flat discs, or discs very slightly hollowed.  Others are rectangular, and are sculptured in relief with a service of loaves, vases, fruits, and quarters of beef and gazelle.  In one instance—­the offering-table of Situ—­the libations, instead of running off, fell into a square basin which is marked off in divisions, showing the height of the Nile at the different seasons of the year in the reservoirs of Memphis; namely, twenty-five cubits in summer during the inundation, twenty-three in autumn and early winter, and twenty-two at the close of winter and in spring-time.  In these various patterns there was little beauty; yet one offering-table, found at Sakkarah, is a real work of art.  It is of alabaster.  Two lions, standing side by side, support a sloping, rectangular tablet, whence the libation ran off by a small channel into a vase placed between the tails of the lions.  The alabaster geese found at Lisht are not without artistic merit.  They are cut length-wise down the middle, and hollowed out, in the fashion of a box.  Those which I have seen elsewhere, and, generally speaking, all simulacra of offerings, as loaves, cakes, heads of oxen or gazelles, bunches of black grapes, and the like, in carved and painted limestone, are of doubtful taste and clumsy execution.  They are not very common, and I have met with them only in tombs of the Fifth and Twelfth Dynasties.  “Canopic” vases, on the contrary, were always carefully wrought.  They were generally made in two kinds of stone, limestone and alabaster; but the heads which surmounted them were often of painted wood.  The canopic vases of Pepi I. are of alabaster; and those of a king buried in the southernmost pyramid at Lisht are also of alabaster, as are the human heads upon the lids.  One, indeed, is of such fine execution that I can only compare it with that of the statue of Khafra.  The most ancient funerary statuettes yet found—­those, namely, of the Eleventh Dynasty—­are of alabaster, like the canopic vases; but from the time of the Thirteenth Dynasty, they were cut in compact limestone.  The workmanship is very unequal in quality.  Some are real chefs-d’oeuvre, and reproduce the physiognomy of the deceased as faithfully as a portrait statue.  Lastly, there are the perfume vases, which complete the list of objects found in temples and tombs.  The names of these vases are far from being satisfactorily established, and most of the special designations furnished in the texts remain as yet without equivalents in our language.  The greater number were of alabaster, turned and polished.  Some are heavy, and ugly (fig. 215), while others are distinguished by an elegance and diversity of form which do honour to the inventive talent of the craftsmen.  Many are spindle-shaped and pointed at the end (fig. 216), or round in the body, narrow in the neck, and flat at the bottom (fig. 217).