made of many pieces joined together by wooden pins.  The pattern is not elegant, but the decoration is very curious.  The lid has no cornice.  Outside, it is inscribed down the middle with a long column of hieroglyphs, sometimes merely written in ink, sometimes laid on in colour, sometimes carved in hollowed-out signs filled in with some kind of bluish paste.  The inscription records only the name and titles of the deceased, accompanied now and then by a short form of prayer in his favour.  The inside is covered with a thick coat of stucco or whitewash.

[Illustration:  Fig. 261.—­Construction of a mummy-case, wall scene, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 262.—­Mask of Twenty-first Dynasty coffin of Rameses II.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 263.—­Mummy-case of Queen Ahmesnefertari.]

Upon this surface, the seventeenth chapter of The Book of the Dead was generally written in red and black inks, and in fine cursive hieroglyphs.  The body of the chest is made with three horizontal planks for the bottom, and eight vertical planks, placed two and two, for the four sides.  The outside is sometimes decorated with long strips of various colours ending in interlaced lotus-leaves, such as are seen on stone sarcophagi.  More frequently, it is ornamented on the left side with two wide-open eyes and two monumental doors, and on the right with three doors exactly like those seen in contemporary catacombs.  The sarcophagus is in truth the house of the deceased; and, being his house, its four walls were bound to contain an epitome of the prayers and tableaux which covered the walls of his tomb.  The necessary formulae and pictured scenes were, therefore, reproduced inside, nearly in the same order in which they appear in the mastabas.  Each side is divided in three registers, each register containing a dedication in the name of the deceased, or representations of objects belonging to him, or such texts from the Ritual as need to be repeated for his benefit.  Skilfully composed, and painted upon a background made to imitate some precious wood, the whole forms a boldly-designed and harmoniously-coloured picture.  The cabinet-maker’s share of the work was the lightest, and the long boxes in which the dead of the earliest period were buried made no great demand upon his skill.  This, however, was not the case when in later times the sarcophagus came to be fashioned in the likeness of the human body.  Of this style we have two leading types.  In the most ancient, the mummy serves as the model for his case.  His outstretched feet and legs are in one.  The form of the knee, the swell of the calf, the contours of the thigh and the trunk, are summarily indicated, and are, as it were, vaguely modelled under the wood.  The head, apparently the only living part of this inert body, is wrought out in the round.  The dead man is in this wise imprisoned in a kind of statue of himself; and this statue is so well balanced that it can stand on its