those sepulchres. The rest of the Greek fancies respecting Hades are not less analogous to the present practices in Egypt. The boat which carries over the bodies is called baris; and a penny is paid as the fare to the boatman, who is called Charon in the language of the country. There are also in the neighbourhood of the same place a temple to gloomy Hecate; the gates of Cocytus and of Lethe, fastened with brazen bars; and other gates of Truth, near which stands the figure of Justice without a head. 66 Many other things mentioned in fable exist in Egypt, the habitual adoption of which still continues. For in the city of Acanthus, on the Libyan side of the Nile, 120 stades (15 miles) from Memphis, they say there is a barrel pierced with holes, to which 360 priests bring water every day from the Nile; and in an assembly in the vicinity the story of the ass is exhibited, where a man twists one end of a long rope, while other persons untwist the opposite end. Melampus, in like manner, brought from Egypt the mysteries of Bacchus, the stories of Saturn, and the battles of the Titans ; as Dædalus imitated the Egyptian labyrinth in the one he built for King Minos, the former having been constructed by Mendes, or by Marus, an ancient king, many years before his time." * That the fable of Charon and the Styx owed its origin to these Egyptian ceremonies, cannot be The reputed dedication of a temple to Dædalus in one of the islands near Memphis, which he says existed in his time, and was honoured by the neighbouring inhabitants, is evidently a Greek fancy. Diodor. i. 97. doubted; and when we become acquainted with all the names of the places and personages connected with the funeral rites of Egypt, these analogies will probably appear still more striking. Of Charon it may be observed that both his name and character are taken from Horus, who had the peculiar office of steersman in the sacred boats of Egypt; and the piece of money given him for ferrying the dead across the Styx† appears to have been borrowed from the gold or silver plate put into the mouth of the dead by the Egyptians. For though they did not intend it as a reward to the boatman ‡, but rather as a passport to show the virtuous character of the deceased, it was of equal importance in obtaining for him admittance into the regions of the blessed.§ The Egyptian custom of depositing cakes in the tombs probably led to the Greek notion of sending a cake for Cerberus, which was placed in the mouth of the deceased; and it was by means of a similar one, drugged with soporiferous herbs, and given to the monster at a hungry hour, that Æneas and The Greeks had not the Egyptian letter Z, and therefore substituted the x, as they now do in modern names; as Charris for Harris, &c. +"Cocyti stagna alta. . . . . Stygiamque paludem." Virg. Æn. vi. 323. Virg. Æn. vi. 299.: "Portitor has horrendus aquas et flumina servat Ipse ratem conto subigit, velisque ministrat, Vide Pettigrew, Pl. 6. fig. 1. and p. 63. Virg. Æn. vi. 419. : "Cui vates, horrere videns jam colla colubris, : the Sibyl obtained an entrance into the lower regions. The judge of the dead is recognized in Osiris; the office of Mercury Psychopompos is the same as that of Anubis; the figure of Justice without a head, and the scales of Truth or Justice at the gate of Amenti, occur in the funereal subjects of the Egyptian tombs; and the hideous animal who there seems to guard the approach to the mansion of Osiris is a worthy prototype of the Greek Cerberus. It was not ordinary individuals alone who were subjected to a public ordeal at their death, - the character of the king himself was doomed to undergo the same test; and if any one could establish proofs of his impiety or injustice, he was denied the usual funeral obsequies when in the presence of the assembled multitude his body was brought to the sacred lake, or, as Diodorust states, to the vestibule of the tomb. "The customary trial having commenced, any one was permitted to present himself as an accuser. The pontiff's first passed an encomium upon his character, enumerating all his noble actions, and pointing out the merit of each; to which the people, who were assembled to the number of several thousands, if they felt those praises to be just, responded with favourable acclamations. If, on the contrary, his life had been stained with vice or injustice, they showed their dissent by loud murmurs: and several instances are recorded of Egyptian monarchs having * Vide supra, Vol. I. p. 257. + Diodor. i. 72. been deprived of the honour of the customary public funeral by the opposing voice of the people." "The effect of this," adds the historian," was that succeeding kings, fearing so disgraceful a censure after death, and the eternal stigma attached to it, studied by their virtuous conduct to deserve the good opinion of their subjects; and it could not fail to be a great incentive to virtue, independent of the feelings arising from a wish to deserve the gratitude of men, and the fear of forfeiting the favour of the Gods." The custom of refusing funeral rites to a king was not confined to Egypt; it was common, also, to the Jewst, who forbade a wicked monarch to repose in the sepulchres of his fathers. Thus Joash, though "buried in the city of David," was not interred "in the sepulchres of the kings+;" Manasseh§ "was buried in the garden of his own house,” and several other kings of Judah and Israel were denied that important privilege. That the same continued to the time of the Asmoneans, is shown by the conduct of Alexander Janneus, who, feeling the approach of death, charged his wife, "on her return to Jerusalem, to send for the leading men among the Pharisees, and show them his body, giving them leave, with great appearance of sincerity, to use it as they might please, whether they would dishonour the dead body by refusing it burial, as having severely suffered through him, or * Vide Vol. II. p. 69., of the Gratitude of the Egyptians towards their Kings. +1 Kings, xiv. 13. 2 Kings, ix. 10. 2 Chron. xxiv. 25. § 2 Kings, xxi. 18. and 26. whether in their anger they would offer any other injury to it. By this means, and by a promise that nothing should be done without them in the affairs of the kingdom, it was hoped that a more honourable funeral might be obtained than any she could give him, and that his body might be saved from abuse by this appeal to their generosity." They had also the custom of instituting a general mourning for a deceased monarch †, whose memory they wished to honour. The But the Egyptians allowed not the same extremes of degradation to be offered to the dead as the Jews sometimes did to those who had incurred their hatred; and the body of a malefactor, though excluded from the precincts of the necropolis, was not refused to his friends, that they might perform the last duties to their unfortunate relative. loss of life and the future vengeance of the Gods was deemed a sufficient punishment, without the addition of insult to his senseless corpse; and hence the unusual treatment of the body of the robber taken in Rhampsinitus' treasury appeared to his mother a greater affliction than the death of her son. It was not, however, a general custom among the Jews to expose the bodies of malefactors, or those who had incurred their hatred: it was thought sufficient to deprive them of funeral obsequies; and the relations were permitted to inter the body in their own house, or in that of the deceased. Thus Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 15. 5. |