We have so far followed Mariette, and have frequently had to make use of his _ipsissima verba_. To his pages and to the plates of the great work of Lepsius, we must refer those readers who are not contented with being told general rules but wish to know the exceptions also. We shall not go into all the changes which variety of taste and the progress of art introduced into the arrangement and decoration of Egyptian buildings; they do not affect the general statements which we have made. We shall not re-state the evidence which enabled Mariette to apportion the 142 painted and sculptured mastabas explored by him in 1869, to the first six dynasties. It is certain that those monuments form a chronological series extending over a space of from twelve to fifteen centuries, and that during the whole of that long period, the general character of Egyptian sepulchral architecture remained unchanged. We should here, perhaps, in order to make our description complete, attempt to convey a true idea of the reliefs which cover the sides of the chamber, and of the statues which fill the serdab. We should, perhaps, by a judicious choice of examples, endeavour to estimate their style and composition; but we shall postpone all such examination until we come to treat of sculpture, and of the way in which the earliest Egyptian artists treated the human form. A didactic and analytic method is so far despotic that it compels us, in order to marshal our facts and to make them easily understood, to separate phenomena which are intimately connected, and to destroy the unity of natural groups. We have thus been driven to separate the figured decorations of the tomb from the architectural arrangements which enframe and support them; with the latter, alone, are we now concerned. We may sum up the foregoing details by the following general description of the Egyptian tomb as it was established in the early ages of the national life, in those years when the national civilization put on the form and colour which it retained until the last days of antiquity.