But yet all this work was not labour lost. These pictures, in which the details change continually from one tomb to another, were all inspired by a single desire, and all tended to the same end. Like those which we have found in the tombs of the Ancient Empire, they had a sort of magic virtue, a sovereign power to save and redeem. The personages and articles of food represented on the mastabas were shadows of people and shadows of material sustenance, destined for the service and the food of a shadow, the _double_ of the defunct proprietor of the tomb. The all-powerful influence of prayer and faith, working through Osiris, turned these shadows into realities. [Illustration: FIG. 182.--Entrance to the tomb of Rameses III. (From Horeau, pl. 21.)] Representations of this kind are common enough in the royal tombs of Thebes. It will suffice if we notice those which are still to be seen in the sepulchre of Rameses III., in the series of small chambers in the first two passages. Like the hunting scene which we take from the walls of a private tomb (Fig. 183), these pictures have, beyond a doubt, the same meaning and value as those in the mastaba. But in the Theban tombs their significance is only secondary. Ideas had progressed to some purpose since the days of the Memphite kings. Both in its general arrangement and in the details of its ornamentation, the sepulchres in the Bab-el-Molouk gave expression to the new, more philosophical, and more moral conception which had come to overlie the primitive beliefs. The first conception was that of the double, inhabiting the tomb, and kept alive in it by sacrifice and prayer. But in time the Egyptians would appear to have realized that the double was not the only thing that remained after the death of a human unit. Their powers of apprehension were quickened, in all probability, by that high moral instinct of which the oldest pages of their literature give evidence. Good or bad, every man had a double, the continuance and prosperity of which depended in no way upon his merits or demerits. Unless the just and the unjust were to come to one and the same end, something more was wanting. This something was the soul (_ba_). Instead of vegetating in the interior of the tomb, this soul had to perform a long and difficult subterranean journey--in imitation of the sun and almost upon his footsteps--during which it had to undergo certain tests and penances. From this period of trial it would emerge with more or less honour, according to its conduct during the few short years passed by it on earth and in company with the body to which it had belonged. It had to appear before the tribunal of Osiris-Khent-Ament, the Sun of Night, around whose seat the forty-two members of the infernal jury were assembled.[255]