"These chambers have, as a rule, to depend upon the door for light, but there are a few instances in which they are lighted from openings in the roof. A remarkable example of the latter arrangement is to be seen in the tomb of Ti, where the innermost chamber, which otherwise would be in complete darkness, is lighted from the roof.
"The chamber is sometimes quite bare, sometimes covered with sculptures and paintings such as those whose character and meaning we have already pointed out. At its further end, and always facing eastwards, stands the inscribed tablet or stele. There are some chambers in which the walls are bare and the stele engraved, but there are none where the walls are carved and the stele plain."
Fig. 112.—Plan of the tomb of Ti.
Figs. 113, 114.—Mastaba at Sakkarah, from Prisse.
In the tomb of Ptah-Hotep, of which we reproduce the principal side, the stele proper is on the left, but the figures and the funerary inscriptions cover all the central part of the richly decorated wall ([Fig. 115]).
We see, then, that the stele is the one indispensable part of this complicated whole. It was, in fact, upon the formula with which it was inscribed, that the Egyptians depended for those magical agencies by which Osiris became the active medium of transmission between the living and the dead.
"At the foot of the stele there was often a table for offerings, in granite, alabaster, or limestone. This was laid flat upon the ground ([Fig. 92]).
Fig. 115.—Western wall in the chamber of the tomb of Ptah-Hotep,
5th dynasty.
Drawn by Bourgoin.
"As a rule this was the only piece of furniture in the chamber; but occasionally we find, on each side of the stele and always placed upon the ground, either two small limestone obelisks, or two objects in that material resembling table legs hollowed out at the top for the reception of offerings."