e further consideration of the Old Kingdom
statues. All these varied experiments were inspired by the same desire,
to preserve the likeness of the deceased. But when the sculptors
attained their object, and created those marvellous life-like portraits,
which must ever remain marvels of technical skill and artistic feeling
(Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic
Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were
strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more
specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life
and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and
incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of
their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically
complete bodies to prevent them from feeling and acting like living
beings. Such must have been the results of their puzzled contemplation
of the great problems of life and death. Otherwise the impulse to make
more certain the preservation of the body by the invention of
mummification and to retain a life-like representation of the deceased
by means of a sculptured statue remains inexplicable. But when the
corpse had been rendered incorruptible and the deceased's portrait had
been fashioned with realistic perfection the old ideas would recur with
renewed strength. The belief then took more definite shape that if the
missing elements of vitality could be restored to the statue, it might
become animated and the dead man would live again in his vitalized
statue. This prompted a more intense and searching investigation of the
problems concerning the nature of the elements of vitality of which the
corpse was deprived at the time of death. Out of these inquiries in
course of time a highly complex system of philosophy developed.[33]

But in the earlier times with which I am now concerned it found
practical expression in certain ritual procedures, invented to convey to
the statue the breath of life, the vitalising fluids, and the odour and
sweat of the living body. The seat of knowledge and of feeling was
believed to be retained in the body when the heart was left _in situ_:
so that the only thing needed to awaken consciousness, and make it
possible for the dead man to take heed of his friends and to act
voluntarily, was to present offerings of blood to stimulate the
physiological functions of the heart. But the element of vi