figurines and wall paintings begin to replace human victims. Some of these figurines may have been created to resemble certain people, so they could follow the king after their own lives ended. Not only did the lower classes rely on the king's favor, but also the noble classes. They believed that upon death, kings became deities who could bestow upon certain individuals the ability to have an afterlife. This belief existed from the predynastic period through the Old Kingdom. Although many spells from the predeceasing texts were carried over, the new Coffin Texts also had new spells added, along with slight changes made to make the new funerary text more relatable to the nobility. In the First Intermediate period, however, the importance of the king declined. Funerary texts, previously restricted to royal use, became more widely available. The kings no longer were god-kings in the sense that admission to the next life was allowed in the next life only due to the royal status, the role of kings changed, becoming merely the rulers of the population who upon death, would be leveled down toward the plane of the mortals. Prehistory, earliest burials The first funerals in Egypt are known from the villages of Omari and Maadi in the north, near present-day Cairo. The people of these villages buried their dead in a simple, round grave with a pot. The body was neither treated nor arranged in a particular way as these aspects would change later in the historical period. Without any written evidence, except for the regular inclusion of a single pot in the grave, there is little to provide information about contemporary beliefs concerning the afterlife during that period. Given later customs, the pot was probably intended to hold food for the deceased. Predynastic period, development of customs Funerary customs were developed during the Predynastic period from those of the Prehistoric period. At first, people excavated round graves with one pot in the Badarian period (4400–3800 ), continuing the tradition of Omari and Maadi cultures. By the end of the Predynastic period, there were increasing numbers of objects deposited with the body in rectangular graves, and there is growing evidence of rituals practiced by Egyptians of the Naqada II period (3650–3300 ). At this point, bodies were regularly arranged in a crouched, compact position, with the face pointing toward either the east and the rising sun or the west