TOMB REPRESENTATIONS— ANGLERS' DEBT 303 



Difference in religious belief, for one thing, precluded. The 

 Sumerians, the first settlers recognised by history in the plains 

 of Shinar, conceived (as did their successors the Babylonians 

 and Assyrians) the next world to be a forbidding place of 

 darkness and dust beneath the earth, to which all, both good 

 and bad, descended. Hence burial under the court of a house 

 or the floor of a room, often without any tomb or cofftn, or 

 nmch equipment for the life beyond the grave, was sufficient. 



In beUef and equipment the Egyptians differed toto orbe. 

 For them after death was preordained a Ufe to obtain which 

 the body must be preserved from destruction ; otherwise it 

 hastened to dissolution and second death, i.e. annihilation. 

 To avoid this fate, they resorted to permanent tombs, embalm- 

 ment, and mummification. 



But as the Double, or Ka, of the departed (unHke the Soul, 

 or Ba, which fared forth to follow the gods) never quitted the 

 place where the mummy rested, daily offerings of food and 

 drink for its sustenance had to be placed in the chapel chamber 

 of the richer tombs. Sooner or later came the time when for 

 reasons of expense, or other, the dead of former generations 

 found themselves neglected, and the Ka was reduced to 

 seeking his food in the refuse of the town. To obviate such 

 a desecration, and ensure that the offerings consecrated on the 

 day of burial might for all time preserve their virtue, the 

 mourners hit upon the idea of drawing and describing them on 

 the walls of the chapel. 



Furthermore to make homelike and familiar his new 

 abode, or the " Eternal House " (in contrast to which the houses 

 of the living were but wayside inns) elaborate precautions 

 were taken. We find depicted on the walls of the chapel the 

 lord of the domain, surrounded by sights and pursuits famiUar 

 to him when alive. " The Master in his tomb," writes Maspero, 

 " superintends the prehminary operations necessary to raise 

 the food by which he is to be nourished in the form of funerary 

 offerings ; scenes and implements of sowing, harvesting, 

 hunting, fishing meet his eye." 



From these representations of actual fife, intended for the 

 comfort of the dead, we, the living, are enabled not only to 



