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. Joab" was buried in his own house in the wilderness*" when slain by the order of Solomon for the murders he had committed; and the greatest severity to which they usually exposed an individual was to deny him the rites of burial.t A question might arise whether the Egyptians positively prevented a king, thus rejected at his public ordeal, from being buried in the catacomb prepared for him, or, merely forbidding the celebration of the pomp customary on that occasion, conducted his body privately to the sepulchre. But the evidence of the sculptures, in one of the tombs of the kings of Thebes, appears conclusive on this point. The name of the monarch has been erased which shows that he was not admitted to the consecrated precincts of the royal cemetery; and this suggests that the same custom prevailed in Egypt as with the Jews, of burying the kings rejected by the public voice either in their own private grounds, or in some place set apart for the purpose. It was not the dread of this temporary disgrace which the Egyptians were taught to look upon as the principal inducement to virtue: a far graver consideration was held out to them in the fear of that final judgment which awaited them in a future state, where they were to suffer both for crimes of omission as well as of commission, and where nothing could shield them from the just vengeance of the Gods. The same doctrine is put forth in the writings of Plato, who, in his Seventh Epistle, says, * 1 Kings, ii. 34. Ps. lxxix. 3. Jer. xiv. 16., and viii. 2., and xvi. 4. "It is necessary, indeed, always to believe in the ancient and sacred discourses, which announce to us that the soul is immortal, and that it has judges of its conduct, and suffers the greatest punishment when it is liberated from the body." The commission of secret crimes might not expose them to the condemnation of the world; they might obtain the credit of a virtuous career, enjoying throughout life an unsullied reputation; and many an unknown act of injustice might escape those who applauded them on the day of their funeral. But the all-scrutinising eye of the Deity was known to penetrate into the innermost thoughts of the heart; and they believed that whatever conscience told them they had done amiss was recorded against them in the book of Thoth, out of which they would be judged according to their works. The sculptured walls of every sepulchre reminded them of this solemn ceremony; the rewards held out to the virtuous were reputed to exceed all that man could imagine or desire; and the punishments of the wicked were rendered doubly odious by the notion of a transmigration of the soul* into the most hateful and disgusting animals. The idea of the punishment was thus brought to a level with their comprehension. They were not left to speculate on, and consequently to call in question, the kind of punishment they were to suffer, since it was not presented to them in so fanciful and unintelligible a * Vide suprà, p. 183. Vol. I. (2d Series) p. 316. and Plate 87. |
