ould one really die? Shadows, dreams, all kinds of phenomena which
the primitive mind could not explain, induced the belief that, though
the outer man might rot, there was an inner man which could not die
and still lived on. The idea of total death was unthinkable. And where
should this inner man still live on but in the tomb to which the outer
man was consigned? And here, doubtless it was believed, in the house to
which the body was consigned, the ghost lived on. And as each ghost had
his house with the body, so no doubt all ghosts could communicate with
one another from tomb to tomb; and so there grew up the belief in a
tomb-world, a subterranean Egypt of tombs, in which the dead Egyptians
still lived and had their being. Later on the boat of the sun, in which
the god of light crossed the heavens by day, was thought to pass through
this dead world between his setting and his rising, accompanied by the
souls of the righteous. But of this belief we find no trace yet in the
ideas of the Ist Dynasty. All we can see is that the _sahus_, or bodies
of the dead, were supposed to reside in awful majesty in the tomb,
while the ghosts could pass from tomb to tomb through the mazes of
the underworld. Over this dread realm of dead men presided a dead god,
Osiris of Abydos; and so the necropolis of Abydos was the necropolis of
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-a-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 Nakada, or
elsewhere, or in his second tomb at Abydos. Ghosts only could serve
ghosts, so