Page:Books on Egypt and Chaldaea, Vol. 25--Liturgy of Funeral Offerings.pdf/15

 the other only lived as long as it was fed with offerings by the living, and provided with an abode, i.e., a statue. Offerings were brought to the funerary chapels and tombs daily, and additional gifts were presented on the days of all great festivals.

In very primitive times offerings of meat and drink were brought to the graves, and laid there for the souls of the dead to partake of at pleasure, just as is the case at the present day in many places in the Sûdân. When the ceremonies connected with the Book of Opening the Mouth were evolved, it became customary for the offerings to be brought forward at a certain place in the service, and afterwards, little by little, the canonical List of Offerings, and its later development, the Liturgy of Funerary Offerings, came into being.

As in the Book of Opening the Mouth the words spoken by the Kher-ḥeb, or chief officiating priest, were believed to change the meat, and bread, and wine into divine substances, so in the Liturgy also the formula which was said over each element was supposed to change it into a divine and spiritual food, which was partaken of by the souls of the gods and of the dead. The material elements of the offerings were eaten by the priests and the relatives of the dead, and the act of eating brought them into communion with the blessed dead, and with the gods. The age of the belief in the transmutation of offerings cannot be stated, but it is certain that it was well known to the Egyptians under the Vth Dynasty, and there is reason