of this shaft varies from
10 to 100 feet. It is carried down through the masonry: it pierces the
rock; and at the bottom, a low passage, in which it is not possible to walk
upright, leads in a southward direction to the vault. There sleeps the
mummy in a massive sarcophagus of limestone, red granite, or basalt.
Sometimes, though rarely, the sarcophagus bears the name and titles of the
deceased. Still more rarely, it is decorated with ornamental sculpture.
Some examples are known which reproduce the architectural decoration of an
Egyptian house, with its doors and windows.[28] The furniture of the vault
is of the simplest character,--some alabaster perfume vases; a few cups
into which the priest had poured drops of the various libation liquids
offered to the dead; some large red pottery jars for water; a head-rest of
wood or alabaster; a scribe's votive palette. Having laid the mummy in the
sarcophagus and cemented the lid, the workmen strewed the floor of the
vault with the quarters of oxen and gazelles which had just been
sacrificed. They next carefully walled up the entrance into the passage,
and filled the shaft to the top with a mixture of sand, earth, and stone
chips. Being profusely watered, this mass solidified, and became an almost
impenetrable body of concrete. The corpse, left to itself, received no
visits now, save from the Soul, which from time to time quitted the
celestial regions wherein it voyaged with the gods, and came down to re-
unite itself with the body. The sepulchral vault was the abode of the Soul,
as the funerary chapel was the abode of the Double.

[Illustration: Fig. 133.--Section showing shaft and vault of mastaba at
Gizeh, Fourth Dynasty.]

[Illustration: Fig. 134.--Section of mastaba, Sakkarah, Sixth Dynasty.]

[Illustration: Fig. 135.--Wall painting of funerary offerings, from mastaba
of Nenka, Sakkarah, Sixth Dynasty.]

Up to the time of the Sixth Dynasty, the walls of the vault are left bare.
Once only did Mariette find a vault containing half-effaced inscriptions
from _The Book of the Dead_. In 1881, I however discovered some tombs at
Sakkarah, in which the vault is decorated in preference to the chapel.
These tombs are built with large bricks, a niche and a stela sufficing for
the reception of sacrificial offerings. In place of the shaft, they contain
a small rectangular court, in the western corner of which was placed the
sarcophagus. Over the sarcophagus was erected a limestone cha