The devout Egyptian believed that after death, if the necessary conditions had been fulfilled on his behalf, he was identified with his god, and like him rose again, was justified, and admitted to the Egyptian Elysian Fields. These conditions, briefly stated, were, first, the continuance for as long a period as possible, of the body, in a state as closely as possible resembling that of life. Whether this need, which, of course, was responsible for the characteristically Egyptian practice of mummification, sprang from the belief that the spiritual essence of the dead man might find a resting-place after death in the mummified shell of its living abode, or whether the creation of the mummy was merely, as Professor Peet asserts, a counsel of despair, an attempt to deny death for as long as possible, is not certain; but the attempt to preserve the body, first by the provision of a secure tomb, and later by mummification as well, endures through the whole of Egyptian history. The second condition was the provision of food and drink, and all the comforts of life, for the dead man in his tomb. The third was the equipping of him with all the words of power which would enable him to escape the dangers which haunted the ways of the Underworld, and to pass the ordeal of the judgment, and with amulets which would prove efficacious in warding off the assaults of the demons of the Underworld. Last of all, as in the Elysian Fields there was work to be done, and it was not fitting that a king or a great noble should stoop to manual labour, the dead man had to be provided with simulacra of servants who should answer for him when he was called upon for service, and take upon themselves his burden of labour. Out of all these conditions there arose gradually the whole wealth of Egyptian funerary equipment, as it is found in the tombs of the great men of the land, and above all in those of the Pharaohs, an equipment whose splendour has dazzled the whole world in the revelations of the tomb of Tutankhamen. From the very earliest times the kings of Egypt were laid to rest with elaborate provision for the wants of the dead monarch, and the provision grew in completeness and complexity with each successive generation, till it reached its culmination in the gorgeous tombs of the Theban Pharaohs of the New Empire, with their hundreds of feet of rock-hewn chamber and corridor, their glittering canopies, their nests of gilded coffins, their wealth of costly amulets and illuminated papyri, their stores of ushabtis, and, at the heart of all, the wonderfully preserved mummy of the man for whom all this magnificence had been prepared.