robably the work of some unknown
enemy.

The wide complicated tombs have around the main chamber a series of
smaller rooms, which were used to store what was considered necessary
for the use of the royal ghost. Of these necessaries the most
interesting to us are the slaves, who were, as there is little reason to
doubt, purposely killed and buried round the royal chamber so that their
spirits should be on the spot when the dead king came to Abydos; thus
they would be always ready to serve him with the food and other things
which had been stored in the tomb with them and placed under their
charge. There were stacks of great vases of wine, corn, and other food;
these were covered up with masses of fat to preserve the contents,
and they were corked with a pottery stopper, which was protected by
a conical clay sealing, stamped with the impress of the royal
cylinder-seal. There were bins of corn, joints of oxen, pottery dishes,
copper pans, and other things which might be useful for the ghostly
cuisine of the tomb. There were numberless small objects, used, no
doubt, by the dead monarch during life, which he would be pleased to see
again in the next world,--carved ivory boxes, little slabs for grinding
eye-paint, golden buttons, model tools, model vases with gold tops,
ivory and pottery figurines, and other _objets d'art_; the golden royal
seal of judgment of King Den in its ivory casket, and so forth. There
were memorials of the royal victories in peace and war, little ivory
plaques with inscriptions commemorating the founding of new buildings,
the institution of new religious festivals in honour of the gods, the
bringing of the captives of the royal bow and spear to the palace, the
discomfiture of the peoples of the North-land.

[Illustration: 067.jpg CONICAL VASE-STOPPERS. From Abydos. 1st Dynasty:
about 4000 B.C.]

All these things, which have done so much to reconstitute for us the
history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed
under the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the
empty tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.

The killing and entombment of the royal servants is of the highest
anthropological interest, for it throws a vivid light upon the manners
of the time. It shows the primeval Egyptians as a semi-barbaric people
of childishly simple ways of thought. The king was dead. For all his
kingship he was a man, and no man was immortal in this world. But yet
how c