Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/242

 152 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, our readers' notice to the fact that he, more than once, alludes to a conception of the future life which differs somewhat from the early Egyptian notions, and belongs rather to the Second Theban Empire and its successors. " The scenes chosen for the decoration of tomb walls had a magic intention ; whether drawn from civil life in the world or from that of Hades, they were meant to preserve the dead from danger and to insure him a happy existence beyond the tomb Their reproduction upon the walls of the sepulchre guaranteed the performance of the acts represented. The dottble shut up in his avpi^^^ saw himself going to the chase upon the surrounding walls and he went to the chase ; eating and drinking with his wife, Fig. 98. — Arrival in Egypt of a company of Asiatic emigrants (Champollion, pis. 362, 393) and he ate and drank with her ; crossing in safety the terrible gulfs of the lower world in the barque of the gods, and he crossed them in safety. The tilling, reaping, and housing on his walls were for him real tilling, reaping, and housing. So, too, the statuettes placed in his tomb carried out for him under magic ^ This word, a-vpiy^ (flute), was employed by the Greeks to designate those long subterranean galleries cut in the rock of the necropolis at Thebes, in the valley called the Valley of the Kings; modern egyptologists apply it in a more general sense to all tombs cut deeply into the flanks of the mountain. For the reason which led the Greeks to adopt a term which now seems rather fantastic, see Pierret, Dictioiuiaire d' Archeologie egyptienne. The chief passages in ancient authors in which the term is applied either to the subterranean excavations of Egypt or to other galleries of the same kind, are brought together by Jomard in the third volume of the Description {Antiquites, vol. iii. pp. 12-14).