Within lurked the Double, ready to profit by these memorial rites, or to accept them through the medium of his statues.

As when he lived upon earth, the man needed a body in which to exist.

His corpse, disfigured by the process of embalmment, bore but a distant resemblance to its former self.

The mummy, again, was destructible, and might easily be burned, dismembered, scattered to the winds.

Once it had disappeared, what was to become of the Double?
The portrait statues walled up inside the _serdab_ became, when consecrated, the stone, or wooden, bodies of the defunct.