They went fowling among the reed-beds, or retired within their painted pavilions to read tales, to play at draughts, to return to their wives who were for ever young and beautiful.[**] ** Gymnastic exercises, hunting, fishing, sailing, are all pictured in Theban tombs. The game of draughts is mentioned in the title of chap. xvii. of the _Book of the Dead_ (Naville's edition, vol. i. pl. xxiii. 1. 2), and the women's pavilion is represented in the tomb of Rakhmiri That the dead were supposed to read tales is proved from the fact that broken ostraca bearing long fragments of literary works are found in tombs; they were broken to kill them and to send on their doubles to the dead man in the next world. It was but an ameliorated earthly life, divested of all suffering under the rule and by the favour of the true-voiced Onnophris. The feudal gods promptly adopted this new mode of life. [Illustration: 279.jpg BOAT OF A FUNERARY FLEET ON ITS WAY TO ABYDOS. 1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Einil Brugsch-Bey. The original was found in the course of M. de Morgan's excavations at Meir, and is now at Gizeh. The dead man is sitting in the cabin, wrapped in his cloak. As far as I know, this is the only boat which has preserved its original rigging. It dates from the XIth or XIIth dynasty. Each of their dead bodies, mummified, and afterwards reanimated in accordance with the Osirian myth, became an Osiris as did that of any ordinary person. Some carried the assimilation so far as to absorb the god of Mendes, or to be absorbed in him. At Memphis Phtah-Sokaris became Phtah-Sokar-Osiris, and at Thinis Khontamentifc became Osiris Khontamentit. The sun-god lent himself to this process with comparative ease because his life is more like a man's life, and hence also more like that of Osiris, which is the counterpart of a man's life. [Illustration: 280.jpg THE SOLAR BARK INTO WHICH THE DEAD MAN IS ABOUT TO ENTER. 1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a vignette in the Papyrus of Nebqadn, in Paris.