Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/359

 The Tomb under the New Empire. 269 which we are speaking as in their own pecuHar sanctuaries on the right bank of the river. In both places they received the same homage and sacrifices, but in the funerary temples of the left bank they found themselves associated, paredral as the Greeks would say, with the princes to whose memory the temples were raised. These princes were represented with the attributes of Osiris, both in the statues which were placed against the piers in the courtyard and in the bas-reliefs upon the long flat surfaces of the walls. By these attributes they became more closely allied with the great deity who was the common protector of the dead and the guarantor of their future resurrection. In this capacity the deceased prince was wor- shipped as a god by his own family. Thus, in the temple of Gournah, we find Rameses I. seated in a naos and receiving the homage of his grandson, Rameses II. ; and, again, the latter worshipping Amen-Ra, Khons, and Rameses I. at one and the same time. This presentation of offerings to the deified king, as represented in the chambers of these temples, recalls the scene which is carved upon almost all the steles, and with greater variety and more detail, in the bas-reliefs on the internal walls of the mastabas. The analogy which we are endeavouring to establish between the western temples at Thebes and the funerary chambers of the private tombs, is completed by the biographical nature ot the pictures which form almost the sole decoration of those temples. The images presented to our gaze by the chamber walls of the mastaba are not, indeed, so personal and anecdotical as those of the temples, but they contain an epitomized representa- tion of the every-day life, of the pleasures and the more serious occupations of a rich Egyptian. It is easy to understand how, with the progress of civilization, the more historic incidents in the life of an individual, and especially when that individual was a king, came to be figured in preference to those which were more general in their application. To embellish the tomb of a conqueror with pictures of his battles and victories was to surround him after death with the images, at least, of those things which made his happiness or his honour while alive. Pictures of some famous feat of arms would give joy to the dottblc of him who had performed them, and would help to relieve the ennui of the monotonous life after death. Hence the tendency which