In the latter part of the Neolithic Period the Egyptians, in some places at least, decapitated and dismembered the dead, but subsequently, probably as a result of change in religious thought, they took steps to preserve them. At first bodies were merely dried in the sun, and then placed in a hole in the ground, in a sitting position, just as they are to this day by the A-Zandê; later they were laid on one side, with the legs bent upwards, and their knees near the chin. Evisceration of some kind appears to have been practised, but not of a very elaborate character. The finest and most complete example of the class of preserved bodies which were buried in a crouching position is exhibited in the First Egyptian Room, Case A. Here we see, lying on his left side, a Predynastic Egyptian, with hair of a reddish tint; the knees are bent to a level with the top of the breast, and the hands are placed before the face. He was dolichocephalic, or =long-headed=, and he was both physically and mentally entirely different from the Dynastic Egyptians, whose skulls, in respect of measurements, occupy a middle position between the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic, or =short-headed=. Round about the body are vessels which held food, flint weapons, etc. At this period the body was sometimes wrapped in the skin of some animal, or rolled up in a reed mat. Soon after the beginning of the Dynastic Period, probably as the result of the growth and development of the cult of Osiris, the Egyptians began to devote more care to the preservation of the bodies of the dead, and the earliest known examples prove that the brain and viscerae were removed, and that the placing of bodies in a crouching position in graves was abandoned, at all events among the ruling classes. The doctrine of Osiris taught that the human body was a precious thing, and men took care to embalm it and swathe it in linen, so that it might be ready for the return of the soul to it, when it would begin a new life in the kingdom of Osiris.