the underworld, to which all ghosts who were not its rightful citizens
would come from afar to pay their court to their ruler. Thus the man
of substance would have a monumental tablet put up to himself in this
necropolis as a sort of _pied-à-terre_, even if he could not be buried
there; for the king, who, for reasons chiefly connected with local
patriotism, was buried near the city of his earthly abode, a second tomb
would be erected, a stately mansion in the city of Osiris, in which his
ghost could reside when it pleased him to come to Abydos.

Now none could live without food, and men living under the earth needed
it as much as men living on the earth. The royal tomb was thus provided
with an enormous amount of earthly food for the use of the royal ghost,
and with other things as well, as we have seen. The same provision had
also to be made for the royal resting-place at Abydos. And in both cases
royal slaves were needed to take care of all this provision, and to
serve the ghost of the king, whether in his real tomb at Nakâda, or
elsewhere, or in his second tomb at Abydos. Ghosts only could serve
ghosts, so that of the slaves ghosts had to be made. That was easily
done; they died when their master died and followed him to the tomb.
No doubt it seemed perfectly natural to all concerned, to the slaves as
much as to anybody else. But it shows the child's idea of the value of
life. An animate thing was hardly distinguished at this period from an
inanimate thing. The most ancient Egyptians buried slaves with their
kings as naturally as they buried jars of wine and bins of corn with
them. Both were buried with a definite object. The slaves had to die
before they were buried, but then so had the king himself. They all had
to die sometime or other. And the actual killing of them was no worse
than killing a dog, no worse even than "killing" golden buttons and
ivory boxes. For, when the buttons and boxes were buried with the king,
they were just as much dead as the slaves. Of the sanctity of _human_