The stele is always in the form of a door with pyloni-form cornice. On
either side is a figure of the deceased, and at the sides are carved
prayers to Anubis, and at a later date to Osiris, who are implored to
give the funerary meats and "everything good and pure on which the god
there (as the dead man in the tomb has been constituted) lives;" often
we find that the biography and list of honorary titles and dignities of
the deceased have been added.
Sakkara was used as a place of burial in the latest as well as in the
earliest time. The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long
decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of
the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for
a new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings,
when Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse
with outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and
glory, and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in
the train of earthly power and grandeur. They deliberately turned their
backs on the worn-out and discredited imperial trappings of the Thothmes
and Ramses, and they took the supposed primitive simplicity of the
Snefrus, the Khufus, and the Ne-user-Ras for a model and ensampler to
their lives.
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