Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/234

 144 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. extinct. All those who could afford it provided against such con- tingencies as these by giving their tombs what we now call a Fig. 92. — Table for offerings, Louvre. perpetual foundation. They devoted to the purpose the revenues of some part of their property, which was also charged with the maintenance of the priest or priests who had to perform the ceremonial rites which we have described.^ We find that, even under the Ptolemies, special ministers were attached to the sepulchral chapel of Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid.^ It may seem difficult to believe that a " foundation " of the ancient empire should have sur- vived so many changes of rc^^ime, but the honours paid to the early kines had become one of the national institutions of Egypt. Each restoring sovereign made it a point of duty to give renewed life to the worship of those remote princes who represented the first glories of the national history. 1 See the paper by M. Maspero upon the great inscription at Siout, which has preserved for us a contract between Prince Hapi-Toufi and the priests of Ap- Motennou, by which offerings should be regularly made to the prince's statue, Ayhich was deposited in a temple at Siout. {Transactions of /he Society of Biblical Archceology, vol. vii. pp. 1-32.) 2 It was the same in the case of a still older king, Seneferu, the founder of the fourth dynasty. (De Rouge, Recherches sur les Monuments que I'on pent attrihier aux six premieres Dynasties de Manethon, p. 41.) Fig. 93. — Another form of the table for offerings. Boulak.