As Blackman (=5=) has pointed out, the Pyramid Texts make it clear that libations were poured out and incense burnt before the statue or the mummy with the specific object of restoring to it the moisture and the odour respectively which the body had during life.
I have already indicated how, out of the conception of the possibility of bringing to life the stone portrait-statue, a series of curious customs were developed. Among peoples on a lower cultural plane, who were less skilled than the Egyptians in stone-carving, the making of a life-like statue was beyond their powers. Sometimes they made the attempt to represent the human form; in other cases crude representations of the breasts or suggestions of the genitalia were the only signs on a stone pillar to indicate that it was meant to represent a human statue: in many cases a simple uncarved block of stone was set up. But the idea that such a pillar, whether carved or not, was the dwelling of some deceased person, seized the imagination and spread far and wide. It is seen in the Pygmalion and Galatea story, and its converse in the tragic history of Lot’s wife. It is found throughout the Mediterranean area, the whole littoral of Southern Asia, Indonesia, the Pacific Islands and America, and can be regarded as definite evidence of the influence of the cult that developed in association with the practice of mummification.
It is necessary to emphasise that the making of portrait-statues was an outcome of the practice of mummification and an integral part of the cult associated with that burial custom. Hartland falls into grave error when he writes “where other peoples set up images of the deceased, those who practised desiccation or embalmment were enabled to keep the bodies themselves” (=32=, p. 418). It was precisely the people who embalmed or preserved the bodies of their dead who also made statues of them.
As these stones, according to such beliefs, could be made to hear and speak (=23=), they naturally became oracles. People were able to commune with and get advice and instruction from the kings and wise men who dwelt within these stone pillars. Thus it became the custom in many lands for meetings of special solemnity, such as those where important decisions had to be made, to be held at stone circles, where the members of the convention sat on the stones and communed with their ancestors, former rulers or wise men, who dwelt in the stones (or the grave) in the centre of the circle.