from this position into the world, so might the deceased be born into
the life in the world beyond the grave; and the presence of amulets, the
object of which was to protect the body, seems to indicate that they
expected the actual body to rise again. The latter, by the mutilation of
the bodies and the burning of the dead, seem to show that they had no
hope of living again in their natural bodies, and how far they had
approached to the conception of the resurrection of a spiritual body we
shall probably never know. When we arrive at the IVth dynasty we find
that, so far from any practice of mutilation or burning of the body
being common, every text assumes that the body is to be buried whole;
this fact indicates a reversal of the custom of mutilation, or burning,
which must have been in use, however, for a considerable time. It is to
this reversal that we probably owe such passages as, "O flesh of Pepi,
rot not, decay not, stink not;" "Pepi goeth forth with his flesh;" "thy
bones shall not be destroyed, and thy flesh shall not perish,"
[Footnote: See _Recueil de Travaux_, tom. v. pp. 55, 185 (lines 160,
317, 353).] etc.; and they denote a return to the views and ways of the
earliest people known to us in Egypt.

In the interval which elapsed between the period of the prehistoric
burials and the IVth dynasty, the Egyptian formulated certain theories
about the component parts of his own body, and we must consider these
briefly before we can describe the form in which the dead were believed
to rise. The physical body of a man was called KHAT, a word which
indicates something in which decay is inherent; it was this which was
buried in the tomb after mummification, and its preservation from
destruction of every kind was the object of all amulets, magical
ceremonies, prayers, and formulae, from the earliest to the latest
times. The god Osiris even possessed such a body, and its various
members were preserved as relics in several shrines in Egypt. Attached