Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/145

 eleven thousand and nine, I will comb them." The other man rather rudely replies, "Make haste, and none of your chatter, you prince of clod-hoppers!" The tomb in which this dialogue occurs is rich in texts of the same kind. It was here that Champollion found the "Song of the Oxen." But all these representations are really subordinate to one end, and that is the worship of the departed. The slaughter of the ox or the antelope is not introduced for its own sake, but really as a sacrifice; and the pictures of men bearing joints are on the point, as they are sometimes actually represented, of offering them to the image of the deceased. An endowment was always intended to provide for the celebration of these propitiatory services, as well as for keeping the tomb in perpetual repair.

The usual form of inscription over the lintel of the tomb, and which is often repeated within the chamber, is as follows:

"A royal table of propitiation grant Anubis, who dwells within the divine house. May sepulture be granted in the nether world, in the land of the divine Menti, the ancient, the good, the great, to him [the