ngement. Sometimes the site chosen was on level
ground: perpendicular shafts or stairways cut in the soil led down
to low-roofed chambers, the number of which varied according to
circumstances: they were often arranged in two stories, placed one above
the other, fresh vaults being probably added as the old ones were filled
up. They were usually rectangular in shape, with horizontal or slightly
arched ceilings; niches cut in the walls received the dead body and the
objects intended for its use in the next world, and were then closed
with a slab of stone. Elsewhere some isolated hill or narrow gorge, with
sides of fine homogeneous limestone, was selected.*

* Such was the necropolis at Adlun, the last rearrangement
of which took place during the Graeco-Roman period, but
which externally bears so strong a resemblance to an
Egyptian necropolis of the XVIIIth or XIXth dynasty, that we
may, without violating the probabilities, trace its origin
back to the time of the Pharaonic conquest.

In this case the doors were placed in rows on a sort of facade similar
to that of the Egyptian rock-tomb, generally without any attempt at
external ornament. The vaults were on the ground-level, but were not
used as chapels for the celebration of festivals in honour of the
dead: they were walled up after every funeral, and all access to them
forbidden, until such time as they were again required for the purposes
of burial. Except on these occasions of sad necessity, those whom "the
mouth of the pit had devoured" dreaded the visits of the living, and
resorted to every means afforded by their religion to protect themselves
from them. Their inscriptions declare repeatedly that neither gold nor
silver, nor any object which could excite the greed of robbers, was to
be found within their graves; they threaten any one who should dare to
deprive them of such articles of little value as belonged to them, or to
turn them out of their chambers in order to make room for others, with
all sorts of vengeance, divine and human. These imprecations have not,
however, availed to save them from the desecration the danger of which
they foresaw, and there are few of their tombs which were not occupied
by a succession of tenants between the date of their first making and
the close of the Roman supremacy. When the modern explorer chances to
discover a vault which has escaped the spade of the treasure-seeker,
it is hardly ever the case