made into mummies; though the priests, to save part of the cost, often put the mummy of a man just dead into Diod. Sic. a mummy-case which had been made and used in lib. i. 92. the reign of a Thothmosis or an Amunothph. They Archæolothought that every man, at his death, took upon gia, xxvii.

Fig. 17.

himself the character of

262.

Denon,

pl. 141.

Osiris, that the nurses who laid out the dead body represented the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, while the man who made the mummy was supposed to be the god Anubis (see Fig. 17). When the embalming was finished, it was part of the funeral to bring the dead man to trial for what he had done when living, and thus to determine whether he was entitled to an honourable burial. The mummy was ferried across the lake belonging to the temple, and taken before the judge Osiris. A pair of scales was brought forth by the dog-headed Anubis, and the hawk-headed Horus; and with this they weighed the past life of the deceased. The judge, with the advice of a jury of forty-two, then pronounced the solemn verdict, which was written down by the ibis-headed Thoth. But human nature is the same in all ages and in all countries, and, whatever might have been the past life of the dead, the judge, not to hurt the feelings of the friends, always declared that he was "a righteous and a good man ;" and, notwithstanding the show of truth in the trial, it passed into a proverb to say Prov. Alex. of a wicked man, that he was too bad to be praised, even at his funeral. Various were the opinions among the priests about a good man's employments after death. Some

આ છે

Plutarch.

painted him on the papyrus which was buried with him, as ploughing with oxen in a meadow well watered with canals, and that needed no pumping. Others made him lie in idle ease by the side of his water-tank, enjoying the wished-for coolness, and freedom from thirst. Others, again, of a more Inscript. haughty nature, buried him with the prayer that he Boeckh, might be able to get the better of his enemies, when he met them in the next world, or showed him sitting in pride with those unhappy men, who might have before offended him, now in bonds beneath his chair; or they painted, on the mummy-case, the same enemies, with their arms tied behind them, under the soles of his feet to be trampled on (see Fig. 18). The custom of embalming was thought right by

4710.

Fig. 18.

all; but from examining the mummies that have come down to us, it would seem to have been very much confined to the priestly families, and seldom used in the case of Diod. Sic. children. The mummies, however, were highly valued by the survivors of the family, and when from poverty any man was driven to borrow money, the

lib. i. 93.

mummies were thought good security by the lender, and taken as such for the loan. The mummy-cases, indeed, could be sold for a large sum, as when made of wood they were covered with painting, and sometimes in part gilt, and often three in number, one inclosing the other (see Fig. 19).

The stone mummy-cases were yet more valuable, as they were either of white alabaster, or hard black basalt, beautifully polished, in either case carved with hieroglyphics, and shaped to the body, like the inner wooden cases.

(44) With the body was very often buried a roll of papyrus,

Fig. 19.-A mummy with its three cases.

containing a copy, more or less complete, of the Book of the Dead; and chapters, out of the same book, were also written on the mummy-case. In its longest-known form, this book contains one hundred and sixty-five chapters, written under a long line of pictures, describing what will befall the dead man hereafter. It begins with the funeral procession, and the passage across the river to the tomb (chapter 1-16). He then enters the region of Amenti; the golden twig, spoken of by Virgil, is presented to him (17), and he goes forward and worships eighteen groups of gods (18-30). He fights and overcomes the crocodiles, serpents, and other wild beasts that he meets with in the Valley of the Shadow of Death (31-41). He arrives in another region, enlightened by the sun, in which grows the tree of life (42-64), and meets with a variety of gods, some in the form of animals (65-88). There the soul returns to his body (89), and he again goes forward by land and by water, meeting with other gods (90-109), till he arrives at his farm-a plot of ground well watered by canals. There he rows about in his boat, he ploughs the ground, he sows the seed, he reaps the corn, threshes it by his trampling oxen, and thanks the Nile-god for the plenteous overflow (110). There he awaits the day of judgment. On leaving his farm, he meets with other gods, and visits several temples (111-124), and is then brought to the judgment-seat. The judge, Osiris, is seated under a canopy, perhaps a gnat-gauze; the deceased is introduced by the goddess of truth; Typhon, in the form of a hippopotamus, accuses him; the four lesser gods intercede for him; his heart is weighed in the scales against the figure of truth, by Horus and Anubis; the forty-two assessors declare him innocent of the forty-two great sins; and the god Thoth writes down the verdict (125). He then sees the bottomless pit, out of which rise flames of fire (126); and after meeting other gods, and crossing over the river in company with numerous gods in other boats (127-140), he meets with the Cabeiri, or gods of punishment; some seated in their underground caves, and all armed with swords (144-146). And lastly he arrives in safety at the temple of the bull Apis, in Lower Egypt (148).

(45) Though the old laws of Egypt must very much have fallen into disuse during the reigns of the latter Ptolemies,

they had, at least, been left unchanged; and they teach us that the shadow of freedom may be seen, as in Rome under the Cæsars, and in Florence under the Medici, long after the substance has been lost. In quarrels between man and man, the thirty judges, from the cities of Thebes, Diod, Sic. Memphis, and Heliopolis, were still guided by the lib. i. 73, 75. eight books of the law. The king, the priests, and

the soldiers, were the only landholders of the country, while the herdsmen, husbandmen, and handicraftsmen, were thought of lower caste. Though the armies of Egypt were for the most part filled with Greek mercenaries, and the landholders of the order of soldiers could then have had as little to do with arms as knights and esquires have in our days, yet they still boasted of the wisdom of their laws, by which arms were only to be trusted to men who had a stake in the country worth fighting for. The old purity of manners, without which the nation could never have risen to its former greatness, had long since passed away. The priests lib. i. 80. alone obeyed the old marriage law, that a man should have only one wife. Other men, when rich enough, for the most part, degraded themselves and the women by marrying several. All children were held equally legitimate, whatever woman was the mother. With such a taint upon a nation, nothing could save it from decay.

Diod. Sic.

British Museum.

(46) It is to these latter reigns of the Ptolemies, when high feeling was sadly wanting in all classes of society, when literature and art were alike in a very low state, that we may place the rise of caricature in Egypt. We find drawings made on papyrus to scoff at what the nation used to hold sacred. The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings of old. In one picture, we have the mice attacking a castle, defended by the cats, copied from a battle scene of Rameses II. fighting against the Ethiopians. In another, the king on his throne as a dog, with a second dog behind him as a fan-bearer, is receiving the sacred offerings from a cat. In a third, the king and queen are playing at chess or draughts in the form of a lion playing with a unicorn or horned ass (see Fig. 20).

(47) We may form some opinion of the wealth of Egypt in