The ingenuity of their contrivances is extraordinary. Food in its natural state would not keep, and various accidents, might, as we have shown, lead to the death of the _double_ by inanition. It was the same with furniture and clothes; the narrow dimensions of the tomb, moreover, would forbid the accumulation there of everything which its sombre tenant might desire. On the other hand the funerary statuettes were made of the most indestructible materials and the bas-reliefs and paintings were one with the thick walls of stone or living rock. These have survived practically unaltered until our day. We visited the tomb of Ti a short time after its chambers had been opened and cleared. It was marvellous to see how form and colour had been preserved intact and fresh under the sand, and this work which was four or five thousand years old seemed to be but lately finished. By the brightness of their colours and the sharp precision of their contours these charming reliefs had the effect of a newly struck medal. Such scenes from the daily life of the people continued to be figured upon Egyptian tombs from the old empire to the new. When their study and comparison were first begun different explanations were put forward. Some believed that they were an illustrated biography of the deceased, a representation of his achievements or of those over which he had presided during the course of his mortal life; others saw in them an illustration of his future life, a setting forth of the joys and pleasures of the Egyptian Elysium. Both these interpretations have had to give way before the critical examination of the pictures themselves and the decipherment of their accompanying inscriptions. It was soon perceived, through comparisons easily made, that these scenes were not anecdotic. On a few very rare occasions they seem to be connected with circumstances peculiar to the inhabitant of the tomb. There are a few steles and tombs upon which the dead man seems to have caused his services to be described, with the object, no doubt, of continuing in the next world his career of honour and success in this. Such an inscription is so far biographical, and a similar spirit may extend to the decorations of the stele and walls of the tomb. As an example of such narrative epigraphs we may cite the long inscription of Ouna, which gives us the life of a sort of grand-vizier to the two first Kings of the sixth dynasty;[142] also the inscriptions upon the tombs of those feudal princes who were buried at Beni-Hassan. In the latter there are historical representations as commentaries upon the text. Among these is the often reproduced painting of a band of Asiatic emigrants bringing presents to the prince and demanding, perhaps, a supply of wheat in return, like the Hebrews in the time of Jacob. [142] DE ROUGÉ, _Mémoire sur les Monuments des six premières Dynasties_ (p. 80 _et seq._). Conf. MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 88-92.