represented twenty such chances. For the same reason, statues also of his
wife, his children, and his servants were placed with the statues of the
deceased, the servants being modelled in the act of performing their
domestic duties, such as grinding corn, kneading dough, and applying a coat
of pitch to the inside surfaces of wine-jars. As for the figures which were
merely painted on the walls of the chapel, they detached themselves, and
assumed material bodies inside the _serdab_. Notwithstanding these
precautions, all possible means were taken to guard the remains of the
fleshly body from natural decay and the depredations of the spoiler. In the
tomb of Ti, an inclined passage, starting from the middle of the first
hall, leads from the upper world to the sepulchral vault; but this is
almost a solitary exception. Generally, the vault is reached by way of a
vertical shaft constructed in the centre of the platform (fig. 133), or,
more rarely, in a corner of the chapel. The depth 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