Offerings to the dead pass through a long series of stages, from the simple provision for the wants of the dead man in the grave up to his proper equipment with all that is due to his rank and state in the next life, or the maintenance of the ties of guardianship and protection over unborn generations. The earliest human remains imply some dim belief that the grave was the dead man's dwelling (p. 20), and there he must be supplied with the requisites for some kind of continued {138} existence. All over the world, food, weapons, ornaments, utensils, are found deposited in barrow and tomb; and this practice culminates in the complicated arrangements of an Egyptian sepulchre, where the wealthy landowner constructed an enduring home for his double, and filled it with representations and objects which could be magically converted to his entertainment after death. When the dead man passes into another world, and enters a land resembling that which he has left (Chap. VIII), he may need wives and slaves appropriate to his rank. From ancient Japan and still more ancient China all round the globe to Mexico are traces of such ritual murder. The widow's self-devotion was exalted in India to religious duty, and cases still occasionally occur when (in spite of the British Government) she seeks to mount the pyre and immolate herself beside her husband's corpse. In West Africa the ghastly tale of the Grand Customs of Dahomey in the last century is well known; and it is supposed that thousands of lives are still annually sacrificed in the Dark Continent to this belief. Other personal needs must be supplied, and on the Gold Coast in the last century an observer saw fine clothes and gold buried with the chief; and a flask of rum, his pipe and tobacco, were laid ready to his hand. Moreover, goods of all kinds can be made over by fire; and in the funeral rites of a Chinese family a paper house with paper {139} furniture and large quantities of paper money may be burned for the endowment of a departed member in his next life.