* The legends still current about the pyramids of Gizeh furnish some good examples of this kind of superstition.  “The guardian of the Eastern pyramid was an idol... who had both eyes open, and was seated on a throne, having a sort of halberd near it, on which, if any one fixed his eye, he heard a fearful noise, which struck terror to his heart, and caused the death of the hearer.  There was a spirit appointed to wait on each guardian, who departed not from before him.”  The keeping of the other two pyramids was in like manner entrusted to a statue, assisted by a spirit.  I have collected a certain number of tales resembling that of Mourtadi in the Etudes de Mythologie et Archeologie Egyptiennes, vol. i. p. 77, et seq.

The statues furnish in their modelling a more correct idea of the deceased than his mummy, disfigured as it was by the work of the embalmers; they were also less easily destroyed, and any number could be made at will.  Hence arose the really incredible number of statues sometimes hidden away in the same tomb.  These sustainers or imperishable bodies of the double were multiplied so as to insure for him a practical immortality; and the care with which they were shut into a secure hiding-place, increased their chances of preservation.  All the same, no precaution was neglected that could save a mummy from destruction.  The shaft leading to it descended to a mean depth of forty to fifty feet, but sometimes it reached, and even exceeded, a hundred feet.  Running horizontally from it is a passage so low as to prevent a man standing upright in it, which leads to the sepulchral chamber properly so called, hewn out of the solid rock and devoid of all ornament; the sarcophagus, whether of fine limestone, rose-granite, or black basalt, does not always bear the name and titles of the deceased.  The servants who deposited the body in it placed beside it on the dusty floor the quarters of the ox, previously slaughtered in the chapel, as well as phials of perfume, and large vases of red pottery containing muddy water; after which they walled up the entrance to the passage and filled the shaft with chips of stone intermingled with earth and gravel.  The whole, being well watered, soon hardened into a compact mass, which protected the vault and its master from desecration.

During the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs at length formed an almost uninterrupted chain of burying-places on the table-land.  At Gizeh they follow a symmetrical plan, and line the sides of regular roads; at Saqqara they are scattered about on the surface of the ground, in some places sparsely, in others huddled confusedly together.  Everywhere the tombs are rich in inscriptions, statues, and painted or sculptured scenes, each revealing some characteristic custom, or some detail of contemporary civilization.  From the womb, as it were, of these cemeteries, the Egypt of the Memphite dynasties gradually takes new life, and reappears in the full daylight