Old Kingdom mastaba tombs were decorated with elaborate reliefs representing the many activities needed to sustain the tomb owner in the next life. These activities included the provisioning of the tomb at the time of the owner's internment and were meant to record the original deposit of grave goods and foodstuffs but also to ensure that the tomb would be supplied in perpetuity. This relief is one such scene depicting a male figure sharpening a knife as the other commands him to "sharpen it". This scene would have been part of a larger butchering scene with each of the steps taken to correctly butcher the animal represented. Such explicit representations in tombs assured that the tomb owner's sustenance in the afterlife would be maintained. The Egyptians understood the afterlife as largely analogous to the world in which they lived. Therefore the dead needed food in the next life as they did in this one and by extension, to acquire food in the afterlife, the same processes used in this life would have to be carried out in the next to prepare it. In a tomb context, these needs would ideally be met many times over-the actual offerings given to the dead would be there to sustain them, and the images of the food and their production would serve the tomb owner after their funerary cult had died away or if the burial goods were compromised. In this way, images of food production served as a sort of insurance policy in the afterlife.
