o not already
possess complete specimens of this class of tombs. A fine one, belonging
to the chief Uerarina, is now exhibited in the Assyrian Basement of the
British Museum; another is in the Museum of Leyden; a third at Berlin,
and so on. Most of these are simple tombs of one chamber. In the centre
of the rear wall we always see the _stele_ or gravestone proper,
built into the fabric of the tomb. Before this stood the low table
of offerings with a bowl for oblations, and on either side a tall
incense-altar. From the altar the divine smoke (_senetr_) arose when
the _hen-ka_, or priest of the ghost (literally, "Ghost's Servant"),
performed his duty of venerating the spirits of the deceased, while the
_Kher-heb_, or cantor, enveloped in the mystic folds of the leopard-skin
and with bronze incense-burner in hand, sang the holy litanies and
spells which should propitiate the ghost and enable him to win his way
to ultimate perfection in the next world.

The stele is always in the form of a door with pyloni-form cornice. On
either side is a figure of the deceased, and at the sides are carved
prayers to Anubis, and at a later date to Osiris, who are implored to
give the funerary meats and "everything good and pure on which the god
there (as the dead man in the tomb has been constituted) lives;" often
we find that the biography and list of honorary titles and dignities of
the deceased have been added.

Sakkara was used as a place of burial in the latest as well as in the
earliest time. The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long
decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of
the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for
a new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings,
when Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse
with outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and
glory, and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in
the train of earthly power and grandeur. They deliberately turned their
backs on the worn-out and discredited imperial trappings of the Thothmes
and Ramses, and they took the supposed primitive simplicity of the
Snefrus, the Khufus, and the Ne-user-Ras for a model and ensampler to
their lives. It was an age of conscious and intended archaism, and in
pursuit of the archaistic ideal the Mem-phites of the Saite age had
themselves buried in the ancient necropolis of Sakk