ABSTRACT
It must be remembered that the whole funerary cult of the Egyptians was originally intended only for the King, and it was the result of a gradual democratisation of religious ideas 1 that it was borrowed during the old kingdom for nobles and for the highest officials, extending more and more as time went on, and percolating to other and lower ranks of the population, but its kingly origin was never forgotten and traces of it reappear again and again, as we shall presently see.
