[Illustration]
Very often, when the body had been a king or some great personage, its
face was covered with a mask of thin gold, and its bandages were
ornamented with pictures and inscriptions.
[Illustration]
When this work of decoration was completed, it was placed in a coffin
which was made large enough to hold the stand.
This coffin was very handsomely ornamented, and then, in order to
make everything very secure indeed, it was enclosed in another or
exterior coffin, which was also decorated in the highest style known
to Egyptian artists.
[Illustration]
One would now suppose that this great king or priest was safe enough,
looking at the matter in an ordinary light. But the Egyptians did not
look at these matters in ordinary lights. Quite otherwise. They
intended the useless bodies of their grandees to be packed away so
that they should not be disturbed as long as the world lasted, little
dreaming of the Americans and Europeans who would come along, in a few
thousand years, and buy them for their museums.
So they put the mummy, with its stand and its two coffins, into a
great stone box called a sarcophagus, and this was fastened and
plastered up so as to seem like one solid rock.
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