In an inscription on a tomb at Benihassan there is a representation of dances at the funeral festival of the monarch Chnomhôtep, of the period of the twelfth dynasty; the dancing is performed by women very slightly clad. Funeral processions were always accompanied by women dancing and singing[359]. In a grave near the royal tombs of Abydos, belonging to the first dynasty (before 5000 B.C.) Flinders Petrie found a curved wand, ending in a ram’s horn, used for beating time in dancing[360]. There can be little doubt that this was used during the performance of the funeral dance. As already pointed out, this rite is still to be seen among the modern Egyptians. Lane gives the following interesting description of it: It is customary among the peasants of Upper Egypt for the female relations and friends of a person deceased to meet together by his house on each of the first three days after the funeral, and there to perform a lamentation and a strange kind of dance. They daub their faces and bosoms, and part of their dress, with mud; and tie a rope-girdle, generally made of the coarse grass called “halfa,” round the waist[361]. Each flourishes in her hand a palm-stick, or a _nebboot_ (a long staff), or a spear, or a drawn sword, and dances with a slow movement, and in an irregular manner, generally pacing about, and raising and depressing the body. This dance is continued for an hour or more, and is performed twice or three times in the course of the day. After the third day the women visit the tomb, and place upon it their rope-girdles; and usually a lamb, or a goat, is slain there, as an expiatory sacrifice, and a feast is made on this occasion[362]. Whether the performers of this dance know the purpose and meaning of it or not now is not stated; but there can be little doubt, knowing what we do of the object of similar dances on similar occasions among other peoples, that it had originally a twofold purpose, though these have now been amalgamated in one rite. In the first place, it was performed as an act of honour to the departed; this would have been more appropriately done on the occasion of offering the sacrifice at the tomb; probably at one time this was the procedure. But it had the further object of combating the evil spirits which were usually supposed to gather in the vicinity of a corpse, hence the palm-stick, etc.; this would be done on behalf of the spirit of the departed as well as of the mourners; the daubing of mud on faces and bosoms was by way of protection against the evil spirits, for it acted as a disguise. There are cases on record in which it is the angry spirit of the deceased himself who is feared and against whom protective measures are taken; but in the example before us the fact that a lamentation is made rather points to the spirit of the deceased not being feared.