The bearers of offerings, friends, and slaves passed over on hired barges, whose cabins, covered externally with embroidered stuffs of several colours, or with _applique_ leather, looked like the pedestals of a monument: crammed together on the boats, they stood upright with their faces turned towards the funeral bark. The latter was supposed to represent the Noshemît, the mysterious skiff of Abydos, which had been used in the obsequies of Osiris of yore. [Illustration: 016.jpg THE BOATS CONTAINING THE FRIENDS AND THE FUNERARY FURNITURE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from paintings on the tomb of Nofirhotpû at Thebes. It was elegant, light, and slender in shape, and ornamented at bow and stern with a lotus-flower of metal, which bent back its head gracefully, as if bowed down by its own weight. A temple-shaped shrine stood in the middle of the boat, adorned with bouquets of flowers and with green palm-branches. The female members of the family of the deceased, crouched beside the shrine, poured forth lamentations, while two priestesses, representing respectively Isis and Nephthys, took up positions behind to protect the body. The boat containing the female mourners having taken the funeral barge in tow, the entire flotilla pushed out into the stream. This was the solemn moment of the ceremony--the moment in which the deceased, torn away from his earthly city, was about to set out upon that voyage from which there is no return. The crowds assembled on the banks of the river hailed the dead with their parting prayers: “Mayest thou reach in peace the West from Thebes! In peace, in peace towards Abydos, mayest thou descend in peace towards Abydos, towards the sea of the West!” [Illustration: 017.jpg A CORNER OF THE THEBAN NECROPOLIS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stele in the Gîzeh Museum.