Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/365

 The Tomb under the New Empire. 275 of ihe tomb were mutually helpful. They lent themselves to that intermittent act' of condensation, so to speak, which from time to time gave renewed substance and consistency to the phantom upon which the future life of the deceased depended. This concentration of all the acts and objects, which had for their aim the preservation of the deceased for a second term of life, was obviously destroyed as soon as the division of the tomb into two parts took place. The mummy, hidden away in the depths of those horizontal wells in the flank of the ■ - ^-'rr'- :'■■ ■.'■ ■■;^"m'S| Western Range of which w^e have spoken, would seem to be in danoer of losincr the benefit of the services held in its honour Upon the Theban plain. At such a distance it would neither hear the prayers nor catch the scent of the offerings. And the dotid/e ? Is it to be supposed that he oscillated between the colossi in the temple where the funerary sites were celebrated, and the chamber in which the corpse reposed ? Before they could have accepted this division of the tomb into two parts the Egyptians must have arrived at some less childish conception of the future life than that of their early civilization.