g the day on which they were about to enter. They might
join their risen god in his course through the hours of light, and
assist him in combating Apophis and his accomplices, plunging again at
night into Hades without having even for a moment quitted his side.

[Illustration: 066.jpg THE ENTRANCE TO A ROYAL TOMB]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph, by Beato, of the
tomb of Ramses IV.

[Illustration: 066b.jpg ONE OF THE HOURS OF THE NIGHT]

They might, on the other hand, leave him and once more enter the world
of the living, settling themselves where they would, but always by
preference in the tombs where their bodies awaited them, and where they
could enjoy the wealth which had been accumulated there: they might walk
within their garden, and sit beneath the trees they had planted; they
could enjoy the open air beside the pond they had dug, and breathe the
gentle north breeze on its banks after the midday heat, until the time
when the returning evening obliged them to repair once more to Abydos,
and re-embark with the god in order to pass the anxious vigils of the
night under his protection. Thus from the earliest period of Egyptian
history the life beyond the tomb was an eclectic one, made up of a
series of earthly enjoyments combined together.

The Pharaohs had enrolled themselves instinctively among the most ardent
votaries of this complex doctrine. Their relationship to the sun made
its adoption a duty, and its profession was originally, perhaps, one of
the privileges of their position. Ra invited them on board because they
were his children, subsequently extending this favour to those whom
they should deem worthy to be associated with them, and thus become
companions of the ancient deceased kings of Upper and Lower Egypt.*

* This is apparently what we gather from the picture
inserted in chapter xvii. of the "Book of the Dead," where
we see the kings of Upper and Lower Egypt guiding the divine
bark and the deceased with them.

The idea which the Egyptians thus formed of the other world, and of the
life of the initiated within it, reacted gradually on their concept of
the tomb and of its befitting decoration. They began to consider the
entrances to the pyramid, and its internal passages and chambers, as a
conventional representation of the gates, passages, and halls of Hades
itself; when the pyramid passed out of fashion, and they had replaced
it by a tomb cut in the rock