chips. Being profusely watered, this mass solidified, and became an almost
impenetrable body of concrete. The corpse, left to itself, received no
visits now, save from the Soul, which from time to time quitted the
celestial regions wherein it voyaged with the gods, and came down to re-
unite itself with the body. The sepulchral vault was the abode of the Soul,
as the funerary chapel was the abode of the Double.

[Illustration: Fig. 133.--Section showing shaft and vault of mastaba at
Gizeh, Fourth Dynasty.]

[Illustration: Fig. 134.--Section of mastaba, Sakkarah, Sixth Dynasty.]

[Illustration: Fig. 135.--Wall painting of funerary offerings, from mastaba
of Nenka, Sakkarah, Sixth Dynasty.]

Up to the time of the Sixth Dynasty, the walls of the vault are left bare.
Once only did Mariette find a vault containing half-effaced inscriptions
from _The Book of the Dead_. In 1881, I however discovered some tombs at
Sakkarah, in which the vault is decorated in preference to the chapel.
These tombs are built with large bricks, a niche and a stela sufficing for
the reception of sacrificial offerings. In place of the shaft, they contain
a small rectangular court, in the western corner of which was placed the
sarcophagus. Over the sarcophagus was erected a limestone chamber just as
long and as wide as the sarcophagus itself, and about three and a half feet
high. This was roofed in with flat slabs. At the end, or in the wall to the
right, was a niche, which answered the purpose of a _serdab_; and above the
flat roof was next constructed an arch of about one foot and a half radius,
the space above the arch being filled in with horizontal courses of
brickwork up to the level of the platform. The chamber occupies about two-
thirds of the cavity, and looks like an oven with the mouth open. Sometimes