Mourtadi in the _Études de Mythologie et Archéologie
Égyptiennes,_ vol. i. p. 77, et seq.

The statues furnish in their modelling a more correct idea of the
deceased than his mummy, disfigured as it was by the work of the
embalmers; they were also less easily destroyed, and any number could
be made at will. Hence arose the really incredible number of statues
sometimes hidden away in the same tomb. These sustainers or imperishable
bodies of the double were multiplied so as to insure for him a practical
immortality; and the care with which they were shut into a secure
hiding-place, increased their chances of preservation. All the same, no
precaution was neglected that could save a mummy from destruction. The
shaft leading to it descended to a mean depth of forty to fifty feet,
but sometimes it reached, and even exceeded, a hundred feet. Running
horizontally from it is a passage so low as to prevent a man standing
upright in it, which leads to the sepulchral chamber properly so called,
hewn out of the solid rock and devoid of all ornament; the sarcophagus,
whether of fine limestone, rose-granite, or black basalt, does not
always bear the name and titles of the deceased. The servants who
deposited the body in it placed beside it on the dusty floor the
quarters of the ox, previously slaughtered in the chapel, as well as
phials of perfume, and large vases of red pottery containing muddy
water; after which they walled up the entrance to the passage and filled
the shaft with chips of stone intermingled with earth and gravel. The
whole, being well watered, soon hardened into a compact mass, which
protected the vault and its master from desecration.

During the course of centuries, the ever-increasing number of tombs at
length formed an almost uninterrupted chain of burying-places on the
table-land. At Gîzeh they follow a symmetrical plan, and line the sides