whether richly decorated or not decorated at all, the chapel is always the
dining-room--or, rather, the larder--to which the dead man has access when
he feels hungry.

[Illustration: Fig. 131.--Plan of serdab and chapel in mastaba of Rahotep
at Sakkarah, Fourth Dynasty.]

[Illustration: Fig. 132.--Plan of serdab and chapel in mastaba of Thenti I.
at Sakkarah, Fourth Dynasty.]

On the other side of the wall was constructed a hiding-place in the form of
either a high and narrow cell, or a passage without outlet. To this hiding-
place archaeologists have given the Arab name of "_serdab_." Most mastabas
contain but one; others contain three or four (fig. 130). These _serdabs_
communicated neither with each other nor with the chapel; and are, as it
were, buried in the masonry (fig. 131). If connected at all with the outer
world, it is by means of an aperture in the wall about as high up as a
man's head (fig. 132), and so small that the hand can with difficulty pass
through it. To this orifice came the priests, with murmured prayers and
perfumes of incense. Within lurked the Double, ready to profit by these
memorial rites, or to accept them through the medium of his statues. As
when he lived upon earth, the man needed a body in which to exist. His
corpse, disfigured by the process of embalmment, bore but a distant
resemblance to its former self. The mummy, again, was destructible, and
might easily be burned, dismembered, scattered to the winds. Once it had
disappeared, what was to become of the Double? The portrait statues walled
up inside the _serdab_ became, when consecrated, the stone, or wooden,
bodies of the defunct. The pious care of his relatives multiplied these
bodies, and consequently multiplied the supports of the Double. A single
body represented a single chance of existence for the Double; twenty bodies