A pair of sandals of painted cardboard or plaited reeds; a staff for walking along the heavenly highways; a ring of enamelled ware; a bracelet or necklace of little blue beads; a tiny image of Ptah, of Osiris, of Anubis, of Hathor, or of Bast; a few mystic eyes or scarabs; and, above all, a twist or two of cord round the arm, the neck, the leg, or the body, intended to preserve the corpse from magical influences,--are the only possessions of the pauper dead.
[31] For a full account of the Twelfth Dynasty tombs at Beni Hasan and El Bersheh see the first memoirs of the _Archaeological Survey of the Egypt Exploration Fund_.
[32] The steps are shown in fig.150.They were discovered by General Sir F.Grenfell in 1885.

Noting the remains of two parallel walls running up from the water's edge to a part of the cliff which had evidently been escarped and presented a vertical face, General Grenfell caused the sand to be cleared, thus disclosing the entrances to several rock- cut tombs dating from the Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties, as well as two flights of steps on either side of an inclined plane leading from the Nile bank to the door of one of the tombs.

The distance between the two walls is ten feet.

The steps are eighteen inches deep, and 250 in number.

The steps were for the haulers, the mummies and sarcophagi being dragged up the inclined plane.