The mortuary chambers are large and carefully built, but generally without ornament or inscription. Of all those explored by him Mariette found but one which had its walls ornamented; in the middle of its decorations, which he does not describe, he contrived to make out a few phrases which seemed to belong to the _Ritual of the Dead_. The sarcophagus was placed in one corner of the chamber. It was generally of fine limestone, sometimes of red granite, and on a few occasions of opaque black basalt. It was rectangular on plan with a round-topped lid squared at the angles. Mariette found none at Sakkarah with inscriptions. On the other hand we find them upon the sarcophagus at Khoo-foo-Ankh, which was discovered at Gizeh and belongs to the fourth dynasty (Figs. 123, 124). [Illustration: FIG. 122.--Double mastaba at Gizeh, transverse section (from Lepsius, t. i., pl. 22).] "The Egyptians did not always trust to the mere size and weight of the lid for the secure closing of the sarcophagus. The under-side of the cover is made with a rebate at its edge which fits into a corresponding groove on the upper edge of the sarcophagus, and the two edges were bound still more tightly together by a very hard cement. Finally, as if all these precautions were not enough, wooden bolts were affixed to the under-side of the lid which fitted into slots in the sarcophagus and helped to render the two inseparable." So far as we can judge from the few human remains which have been gathered from these ancient tombs, the process of embalmment was then carried on in simple and elementary fashion, and it was this imperfection that the Egyptians attempted to neutralize, by the innumerable and complicated precautions which they took to insure that the corpse should not be disturbed in its envelope of stone. In later times, when the preparation of the mummy was better understood, they were not so careful to seal up the sarcophagus from the outer air. "The furniture of the mummy chamber comprised neither statues, nor funerary statuettes, nor amulets of any kind. Sometimes a few ox bones bestrew the ground. Two or three large and pointed red vases, containing nothing but a thin deposit of clay, rest against the walls. Within the sarcophagus we find the same sobriety of sepulchral furniture. Beyond a wooden or alabaster pillow (Fig. 105) and half a dozen little drinking cups of alabaster, nothing has been found there but the mummy itself." [Illustration: FIG. 123.--Sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh. Perspective after Bourgoin. Red granite. Height 1·33 metres. Boulak.]