In these graves the coffins were of rectangular and anthropoid form, and the mummies were enclosed in canvas cartonnages covered with stucco elaborately decorated with pictures of the numerous Egyptian deities and ritual inscriptions of the usual formulae. Their funerary objects were glazed faience bowls of several colours, such as many different blues, violets, &c.; small roughly glazed shawabti figures; porcelain deities and amulets; painted carved wood _Ba_-birds; erotic figures in faience; and beads, &c. There were also vases and bowls in pottery; and in two instances we found a bowl of copper gilt (Fig. 12) and vases in lead, left or forgotten by the plunderers. Luckily the substructure of these graves was nearly always found intact, and likewise in many cases their superstructure. And by this we were able to gather that it was a common custom for them to have small brick vestibules or shrines before their entrances; and that under the floors of either the out-buildings or the vaulted chambers themselves, one or more amphorae were buried for water or food for the dead (Pl. XXXIV, Fig. 1); the mouths of these jars were covered by inverted bowls and sealed with mud. [Illustration: FIG. 12. GILT COPPER VESSEL FROM PTOLEMAIC VAULTED GRAVES.] In one of these sealed vessels, found under the floors, two demotic papyri were discovered (see description by Spiegelberg, p. 46); in others were date cakes, grain, and seeds of different kinds; and in the corner of one of the small outer chambers a batch of forty-seven Ptolemaic coins (p. 44). The fortunate discovery of the papyri and coins, treated hereafter, give data for fixing the period of these vaults to the earlier Ptolemaic times. With regard to construction, these vault-graves built of mud-brick are of a rectangular longitudinal shape. The side walls, one and a half bricks thick, are from six to ten bricks high, while the end walls are carried up to the height of the crown of the vault. On the inner face of the side walls a ledge is left, half-way up, for a support to carry the vaulted roof (the outer faces are run up as high again to receive the thrust of the vault). The vaulted roof, one brick in thickness, has its rings leaning against the end wall, starting at the foot with first one brick on either side, then two, three, and so on, until the feet of these incomplete rings are far enough out to allow a complete leaning ring to be formed with its crown actually touching the end wall at the top. To this complete ring the bricks of the subsequent rings of the vault are stuck, thus avoiding the force of gravity and enabling the vaulting to be built without the aid of timber centring. This is a method by which a barrel-vault can be made, technically known as a _flown-vault_, and which is known and used by natives in Egypt at the present day. For strength and to reduce the thrust, the vault is of parabolic section and not truly semicircular.