The liability of the mummy to accident had to be provided against. The idea of the unhappy condition in which the _double_ would find itself when its mummy had been destroyed, led to the provision of an artificial support for it in the shape of a statue. Art was sufficiently advanced not only to reproduce the costume and ordinary attitude of the defunct and to mark his age and sex, but even to render the individual characteristics of his physiognomy. It aspired to portraiture; and the development of writing allowed the name and qualities of the deceased to be inscribed upon his statue. Thus identified by its resemblance and its inscriptions it served to perpetuate the life of the _double_, which was in continual danger of dissolution or evaporation in the absence of a material support. The statues were more solid than the mummy, and nothing stood in the way of their multiplication. The body gave but one chance of duration to the _double_; twenty statues represented twenty chances more. Hence the astonishing number of statues which are sometimes found in a single tomb. The images of the dead were multiplied by the piety of surviving relations, and consequently the _double_ was assured a duration which practically amounted to immortality.[129] [129] MASPERO, _Conférence_, p. 381. [Illustration: FIG. 88.--Man and his wife in the style of the 5th dynasty. Calcareous stone. From the Louvre.] We shall see that a special recess was prepared in the thickness of the built up portion of the tomb for the reception of wooden or stone statues, so that they might be kept out of sight and safe from all indiscreet curiosity. Other effigies were placed in the chambers of the tomb or the courts in front of it. Finally, we know that persons of consideration obtained from the king permission to erect statues in the temples, where they were protected by the sanctity of the place and the vigilance of the priests.[130] [130] MASPERO, _Notes sur différentes Points de Grammaire et d'Histoire_, p. 155. (In the _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l'Archéologie Égyptienne et Assyrienne_, vol. i.) [Illustration: FIG. 89.--Sekhem-ka, his wife Ata, and his son Khnem, in the style of the 5th dynasty. Limestone. From the Louvre.]