СНАР. Х. SOME REFUSED BURIAL. 377 its lake, at which the same ceremonies were practised; and it is probable, from what Diodorus says of the "lake of the nome," that the capital of each province had one in its immediate vicinity, to which the funeral procession of all who died within the jurisdiction of the nomarch was obliged to repair. Even when the priests granted a dispensation for the removal of a body to another town, as was sometimes done in favour of those who desired to be buried at Abydus and other places, the previous ceremony of passing through this ordeal was doubtless required at the lake of their own province. Those persons who, from their extreme poverty, had no place prepared for receiving their body when denied the privilege of passing the sacred lake, appear to have been interred on the shores they were forbidden to leave; and I have found the bones of many buried near the site of the lake of Thebes, which appeared to be of bodies imperfectly preserved, as of persons who could not afford the more expensive processes of embalming. This was like remaining on the wrong side of the Styx; and Diodorus has shown that the fables of the Acherusian lake, of Hecate, of Cerberus, of Charon and the Styx, owed their origin to these Egyptian ceremonies. 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 Sibyl obtained an entrance into the lower regions. The judge of the dead is recognised in Osiris; the office of Mercury, the conductor of souls, 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 guards the approach to the mansion of Osiris, and is called "the devourer of the wicked," 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 funereal obsequies when, in the presence of the assembled multitude, his body was brought to the sacred lake, or, as Diodorus states, to the vestibule of the tomb. "The customary trial having commenced, any one was permitted to present himself as an accuser. The pontiffs 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 been deprived of the honour of the customary public funeral by the opposing voice of the people." "The effect of this," adds the historian, 66 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 Jews*, 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 t;" Manasseh "was buried in * 1 Kings, xiv. 13; 2 Kings, ix. 10. † 2 Chron. xxiv. 25. 2 Kings, xxi. 18 and 26. СНАР. Х. KING REFUSED BURIAL. 66 379 the garden of his own house," and several other kings of Judah and Israel were denied that important privilege. And the speech of Samuel, on giving up his post of judge, "Whom have I defrauded? and the answer of the people, prove that the custom was adopted by the Jews before they had the kingly form of government.* That the same continued to the time of the Asmodeans, 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 suffered severely through him, or 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. 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. "The Egyptians," according to Herodotus, "were the first to maintain that the soul of man is immortal; that after the death of the body it always enters into that of some other animal which is born; and when it has passed through all those of the earth, water, and air, it again enters that of a man, which circuit it accomplishes in 3000 years." The doctrine of transmigration is mentioned by Plutarch, Plato, and other ancient writers as the general belief among the Egyptians, and it was adopted by Pythagoras and his preceptor Pherecydes, as well as other philosophers of Greece. * 1 Sam. xii. 4, 5. Opinions varied respecting it; and some maintained that the soul passed through different bodies till it returned again to the human shape, and that all events which had happened were destined to occur again after a certain period, in the identical order and manner as before. The same men were said to be born again, and to fulfil the same career; and the same causes were thought to produce the same effects, as stated by Virgil. This was termed κυκλος ανάγκης, "the circle (or orbit) of necessity.” It is even supposed that the Egyptians preserved the body, in order to keep it in a fit state to receive the soul which once inhabited it; and that their tombs were decorated so richly in order to be ready for their owners on a future occasion. But this is contradicted by the fact of the tombs being sold to later occupants; and by animals being also embalmed, the preservation of whose bodies was not ascribable to any idea connected with the soul; and the custom arose rather from a sanitary regulation for the benefit of the living, and from that feeling of respect for the dead which is common to all men. 66 And since it is distinctly shown that all virtuous men became Osiris," and returned again to the Good Being whence their souls emanated, their coming to earth again at any period is improbable; and the bad alone were condemned to that degradation, going through a state of purgatory, by passing into the bodies of animals. This, which accords with the belief of the Hindoos, is more consistent with what we know of the notions of the Egyptians ; and there is reason to believe from the monuments, that the souls which underwent transmigration were those of men whose sins were of a sufficiently moderate kind to admit of that purification; the unpardonable sinner being condemned to eternal fire. The Buddhists have the same notion of the soul of man passing into the bodies of animals; and even the Druids believed in the migration of the soul, though they confined it to human bodies. The judgment scenes, found in the tombs and on the papyri, sometimes represent the deceased conducted by Horus alone, or accompanied by his wife, to the region of Amenti. Cerberus is present as the guardian of the gates, near which the scales of CHAP. X. TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS. 381 Justice are erected; and Anubis, "the director of the weight," having placed a vase representing the good actions, or the heart, of the deceased in one scale, and the figure or emblem of Truth in the other, proceeds to ascertain his claims for admission. If on being "weighed" he is "found wanting," he is rejected; and Osiris, the judge of the dead, inclining his sceptre in token of condemnation, pronounces judgment upon him, and condemns his soul to return to earth under the form of a pig, or some other unclean animal. Placed in a boat, it is removed, under the charge of two monkeys, from the precincts of Amenti, all communication with which is figuratively cut off by a man who hews away the earth with an axe after its passage; and the commencement of a new term of life is indicated by those monkeys, the emblems of Thoth, as Time. But if, when the sum of his deeds have been recorded, his virtues so far predominate as to entitle him to admission to the mansions of the blessed, Horus, taking in his hand the tablet of Thoth, introduces him to the presence of Osiris; who, in his palace, attended by Isis and Nepthys, sits on his throne in the midst of the waters, from which rises the lotus, bearing upon its expanded flower the four Genii of Amenti. Other representations of this subject differ in some of the details; and in the judgment scene of the royal scribe, whose funeral procession has been described, the deceased advances alone in an attitude of prayer to receive judgment. On one side of the scales stands Thoth, holding a tablet in his hand; on the other the Goddess of Justice; and Horus, in lieu of Anubis, performs the office of director of the balance, on the top of which sits a Cynocephalus, the emblem of Thoth. Osiris, seated as usual on his throne, holding his crook and flagellum, awaits the report from the hands of his son Horus. Before the door of his palace are the four Genii of Amenti, and near them three deities, who either represent the assessors, or may be the three assistant judges, who gave rise to the Minos, acus, and Rhadamanthus of Greek fable. In these the Min and Amenti are very Egyptian. Another, figured in the side adytum of the Ptolemaic temple of Dayr el Medeeneh, at Thebes, represents the deceased approaching in a similarly submissive attitude, between two figures |
