Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/229

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Sepulchral Architecture. 139 From the point of view of the ancient Egyptians such precau- tions were by no means futile. Many of these effigies have come down to us safely through fifty or sixty centuries and have found an asylum in our museums where they have nothing to fear but the slow effects of climate and time. Those which remain intact

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FlG. 89. — bekhcin-ka, his wife Ata, and his son Khneui, in the style of the 5th dynasty. Limestone. From the Louvre. may therefore count upon immortality. If the double required nothing to preserve it from annihilation but the continued existence of the image, that of Chephren, the builder of the second great pyramid, would be still alive, preserved by the magnificent statue of diorite which is the glory of Boulak, and thanks to the durability