[Illustration: Fig. 126.--Stela in tomb of Merrûka (Fifth Dynasty, Abûsir):
a false doorway containing the statue of the deceased.]

The general appearance of the recess is that of a somewhat narrow doorway.
As a rule it was empty, but occasionally it contained a portrait statue of
the dead standing with one foot forward as though about to cross the gloomy
threshold of his tomb, descend the few steps before him, advance into his
reception room or chapel, and pass out into the sunlight (fig. 126). As a
matter of fact, the stela symbolised the door leading to the private
apartments of the dead, a door closed and sealed to the living. It was
inscribed on door-posts and lintels, and its inscription was no mere
epitaph for the information of future generations; all the details which it
gave as to the name, rank, functions, and family of the deceased were
intended to secure the continuity of his individuality and civil status in
the life beyond death. A further and essential object of its inscriptions
was to provide him with food and drink by means of prayers or magic
formulae constraining one of the gods of the dead--Osiris or Anubis--to act
as intermediary between him and his survivors and to set apart for his use
some portion of the provisions offered for his sake in sacrifice to one or
other of these deities. By this agency the _Kas_ or Doubles of these
provisions were supposed to be sent on into the next world to gladden and
satisfy the human _Ka_ indicated to the divine intermediary. Offerings of
real provisions were not indispensable to this end; any chance visitor in
times to come who should simply repeat the formula of the stela aloud would
thereby secure the immediate enjoyment of all the good things enumerated to
the unknown dead whom he evoked.

[Illustration: Fig. 127.--Wall scene of funerary offerings, from mastaba of
Ptahhotep, Fifth Dynasty.]