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water for the feet and hands was offered in the houses of people of distinction in a style becoming citizens of no mean cities; none of your delf, none of your porcelain even, none of your figured glass, none of your alabaster or such common wares to wash in, but golden ewers and basins beautifully fashioned. After he had washed, each guest was anointed by a servant with perfumed unguents out of porcelain or alabaster boxes, then he was crowned or garlanded with flowers, and so made fit to enter the reception-room, where he found ladies and gentlemen seated on ottomans, chairs, stools, and sofas.

The entertainment began by an offer of wine being made to all the guests, female and male, and then, while dinner was being prepared, the said guests conversed or listened to favourite airs played on the harp, pipe, flute, and tambourine by professional musicians. Anon came the repast; but we are not asked to sit satisfied with seeing that there are dishes, and plenty of them we are taken through the slaughter-house and through the kitchen, and by the most minute description thoroughly informed as to the preparation. There is to be seen the ox, gazelle, oryx, or kid bound for slaughter, and the butcher applying his fatal knife; and let it be remarked that these ancient butchers wore in their belts and tied to their aprons steels for sharpening the knives. The whole process of preparing the animals for the table is then laid bare, and we are introduced to the head cook and his assistants, who are seen to be spitting, mincing, pounding, garnishing, poking the fires, and blowing the bellows with their feet. Joints, horsd'œuvres, savoury meats, were thus prepared, and not a few tasty messes made with geese and other poultry, while the most delicious vegetables entered largely into the composition of almost every dish. Who does not call to mind the murmurs of the Israelites at Taberah? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic." The baking (including unmistakable macaroni ) and confectionery were intrusted to another set of artists, of whom Pharaoh's ill-fated chief baker was probably a director. Everything is shown us, down to the minutest circumstance; and we even know what parts, when that which was thought worthy to be cooked for the guests had been selected, were given to the poor. But we must not loiter, though the temptation to do so is strong.

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We find the guests (to return to the

party) entertained sometimes by sexes separately, though in the same room, and sometimes with the ladies and gentlemen intermixed at the same table. The table was generally, though not invariably, round; and the dishes with loaves of bread were placed on it, the table itself being removed with every course, and another substituted with the next course. But at other times the table remained all through the meal, and the viands were brought in baskets. Wine was freely handed about to ladies as well as gentlemen; and there is reason to believe that the former even liked it, and sometimes went so far as to take a thimbleful too much, as the unmerciful sculptor has not scrupled to record. They not only could get merry and frisky, but one young lady (and we feel certain that not a practice of the girl of the period, but a particular accident, must have suggested the sculpture) is very unwell indeed, as if she were at sea, and you see all her distress, and the assistance rendered to her- oh my!! Of course, where such a thing could be imagined of a lady, gentlemen were not unfrequently elevated - ça va sans dire.

But while we contemplate their hilarity and indiscretion, mention must be made of a most remarkable custom at feasts: medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid; while they are at the height of their enjoyment, servants enter bearing in a mummy, or the semblance of one, and this hideous object is handed round to every guest. The application of this incident rested, of course, with each guest according to his disposition; some regarded it as Falstaff said he did old Bardolph's face- saw in it a memento mori to recall them to serious reflection; while others looked at it much more as Falstaff really would, and drew the moral, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The intention was, no doubt, to restrain intemperance and levity.

After dinner, music and singing were resumed. These were followed by dancing and feats of agility and tumbling. Almost all the achievements in this line which amuse us to-day are to be seen executed to the life on the sculptures, the effects of which on the mind, when the lapse of time occurs to it for a moment, are absolutely startling. Something that you saw last week, after it had been trumpeted as the most astonishing novelty, you may see today facing you in a museum on an Egyptian tableau of incalculable antiquity. Magicians, professors of gymnastics, and sleightof-hand men were all occasionally introduced, the conjuring being, of course, a favourite amusement. Mr. Kenrick, being

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for a moment a little simple or a little pom- and a somewhat ostentatious taste existed pous, writes thus of one of the tricks: in Egypt. Just as the wealthy moderns We see two men seated with four inverted develop or invent all manner of fancies, and cups placed between them, and it is evident spare no expense to gratify their caprices, that the game consisted in guessing beneath so did opulent Egyptians deny themselves which of the cups some object was con- nothing in the way of wines, equipages, cealed." In homelier phrase, the noble works of art, pleasure-boats, slaves, aniscience of thimblerig was understood and mals, trees, &c. But while the funds practised; and it is satisfactory to find, by arising from extensive farms and the abunsubsequent reference to Wilkinson, who dant produce of a fertile soil enabled the speaks less fastidiously, that this interpreta- rich to indulge extravagant habits, many of tion is true. Draughts and dice were much the less wealthy envied the enjoyment of played at, and wrestling and single-stick those luxuries which fortune had denied to gave delight to some. Buffoonery seems to them; and, prompted by vanity and a dehave been appreciated by all. sire of imitation, so common in civilized Occasion was taken in a former paper* to communities, and so generally followed by speak of the art of making musical instru- fatal results, they pursued a career which ments, and incidentally to mention the later speedily led to an accumulation of debt, opinions concerning the musical taste of the and demanded the interference of the LegEgyptians. But we did not say then - nei-islature."* Now the interference of the ther can we say now one tithe of what it is desirable to say on this subject. The introduction on the tableaux of music on every possible occasion, shows how generally the science was appreciated; and the beautiful stringed instruments which even yet survive, tell us of themselves how devoted the people were to the hearing of sweet sounds. Specimens of the instruments-a3 of most other things of general use or estimation were laid up in the tombs, where, unseen and undisturbed, they were left to gratify the eyes of the spirit whose mummy, with its countless bandages, lay embalmed in the same sepulchre. In one of these tombs, the date of closing which was ascertained to be more than a thousand years before Christ, a harp of many strings was discovered in 1823. One of the exploring party laid his hand upon the instrument, and let him who may read it without emotion the chords which had been motionless and silent for upwards of three thousand years vibrated to his touch, and woke the echoes of the

tomb with musical sounds!

"O wake once more! how rude so'er the hand

That ventures o'er thy magic muse to stray. O wake once more! though scarce my skill command

Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay;
Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,
And all unworthy of thy nobler strain;
Yet if thy heart throb higher at its sway,

The wizard-note has not been touched in vain. Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!"

From the few particulars, meagre though they be, which have been given, it may be understood that a tolerable degree of luxury

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Legislature was remarkable, inasmuch as it was ordained that when a man had been so silly as to get deeply into debt, he should give his father's (or, as Wilkinson supposes, his nearest relation's, since his father may not yet have been mummified) mummy in pledge for payment. Not to have redeemed the mummy would have rendered the debtor infamous. He was therefore thus put under the strongest obligation to acquit himself of the debt, and generally did acquit himself. The liberal creditor, not altogether caring to domesticate the mummy, was commonly satisfied with possession of the tomb. This was quite enough to brand the debtor and his family too if the account remained long unpaid; and the pledge and the penalty being so awful, it is suggested that some relation- - say an uncle- would come forward and receive the precious deposit, to keep the affair within the bounds of the family. Being too much occupied to follow up this suggestion, pregnant as it is, we hereby unreservedly present it to the etymologists, by whose labours we hope to see a remarkable but perplexing modern form of speech clearly connected with the earlier Coptic.

The design of this paper being but to present some striking points of Egyptian life, with a view of inducing a comprehensive study of it, we pass now from the lives (most meagrely glanced at) of that ancient people to their deaths, or the circumstances connected therewith, premising that everything belonging to death and funerals was of immense importance, and thoughts of, and preparations (both material and moral) for death, appear to have occupied individuals as much as the requirements of their

* Wilkinson's "Manners and Customs," &c.

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lives. Although they had a consciousness | course, there were, heading their advertiseof the soul's separate existence in a spiritual ments with- Why give more?" "To world called Amenthe, there was neverthe- persons about to perish." "When you die less some strong idea, not yet clearly send your body to us." "A perfect cure; evolved, of communication maintained be- you last forty centuries or your money retween the soul and the mummy, as long as turned," - and such ad captandum snares; the latter should not be wholly dissolved. but it was too serious a matter altogether Hence they came to look upon the tomb for any discreet person to chaffer with charin which a man was to lie for thousands of latans in respect of it. For the confounded years as his real home, in contradistinction | risk was this: the spirit would not be proto his house, which, as a stranger and a vided with another body for 3000 years; pilgrim, he would occupy for some fraction and if in the mean time its old temple of a century. Accordingly, a man of any should be dissolved, what was to become means, from the king downwards, set of it, the spirit aforesaid? about the provision of a tomb for himself Now we quite remember that the spirit as soon as he attained to independence, was understood to have gone to Osiris in and he lavished his wealth in making his Amenthe; we have just said that it still long home worthy of him. He furnished maintained its place in the old firm of which and he decorated it; architecture, sculpture, the body had declined into a sleeping partpainting, all the arts contributed to its mag-ner, and that it hovered about the tomb, nificence; furniture, instruments, utensils, jewels, records, were stored there in profusion; indeed it is in these tombs that we find our most interesting relics, as the harp above spoken of, or the sculptures placed around the mummy to recall familiar scenes and pleasures.

and didn't forget its old tastes and habits;
and we have now to add that, in the inter-
val between the decease of the old human
body and its entering a new one, it passed
3000 years in bodies of beasts, birds, fishes,
and reptiles! How to reconcile these des-
tinies? Well, it can't be done at present,
but the fault, no doubt, is with us, who don't
half understand as yet the things which
have been transmitted to us.
The Egyp-
tians were certainly most earnest about the
life hereafter, and they were too shrewd
and too logical to be satisfied with any
hocus-pocus doctrines on a subject so im-
portant. We must wait for more light,
remembering that a great deal of what is
ascribed to the Egyptians, and what has
been accepted by the moderns, is only the
account of the Greeks who may have wholly
misunderstood the theology of the superior
people whom they professed to portray.
Greek speculation must go down before the
monuments.

Now, mummification having been, as we showed before, an art so important and so well understood, people while in health would naturally declare their wishes, and make their provision in that regard. But although every man hoped to become some sort or other of mummy- an Egyptian being always considered worth his saltyet it depended upon his means in what style he should be packed for eternity. Herodotus gives three principal methods, but it is probable that these admitted of modifications according to price. One can hardly realize the satisfaction of going into an embalmer's establishment, and cruising about to choose after what pattern one would be a body," as Mr. Mantilini put No sooner had a member of a family died it. But the quest must have had its fasci- than the females of the house plastered nations. "Genteel, well-cured mummy their heads and faces with urud, and rushed very sound, only 7 minæ (£20)," would into the streets, striking their bare bosoms meet the eye on one side, and seem very and uttering mournful cries. They were eligible; but then the price! Well, then, there joined by relations and friends, who look at this "22 minæ (£60), and a per- all added their lamentations. This was the fect gem at the money. Extra natron beginning of a woe which was continued warranted to last 10,000 years - equal with variations throughout a period of to first-class in duration difference in ex-seventy-two days-i.e., while the corpse ternal materials only." Or, if that does was taken to the embalmers, made a not satisfy, then-"In this style, finest mummy of in due process, and returned that can be made, with latest improve- impregnably corned to the wailing relations. ments, one talent (£250)." So, after a After this last event, a new set of ceregreat deal of hesitation and balancing of expense against quality, a decision would be arrived at. Quack embalmers, of

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"Blackwood's Magazine" for August 1870.

See the account of the mourning for Jacob : "And forty days were fulfilled for him; for so are fulfilled the days of those which are embalmed: and the Egyptians mourned for him threescore and ten days." Gen. 1. 3.

monies was proceeded with. The mummy had assigned to it a closet in the house, where it stood upright against a wall, when entirely unoccupied. But the leisure of a young mummy was but scanty, there being innumerable ceremonies and domestic meetings at which it was required to attend. A small sledge was used for moving it

about from chamber to chamber. It was taken out of its closet and anointed with oil or ointment; it was embraced and mourned over; libations, incense, and offerings of vegetables were presented to the gods on its behalf; liturgies were recited by priests. It sometimes even happened that the mummy was placed at table, as if friends desired to enjoy its society.

For an indefinite period, ranging from a few weeks to a year, the mummy was an inmate of the house; but sooner or later

arrived the time when it had to be deposited in the tomb, and then their was something like a stir. Not only are the funeral processions described but several have been

depicted in all their details. The magnificence with which people of rank were borne to the grave could not be exceeded.

"First came several servants carrying tables laden with fruit, cakes, flowers, vases of ointment, wine and other liquids, with three young geese and a calf for sacrifice, chairs and wooden tablets, napkins, and other things. Then others bringing the small closets in which the mummy

flowers, and bottles for libation; and then seven or eight women, having their heads bound with fillets, beating their breasts, throwing dust upon their heads, and uttering doleful lamentations for the deceased, intermixed with praises of his virtues.... Next came the hearse, placed in the consecrated boat upon a sledge, drawn by four oxen and by seven men, under the direction of a superintendent, who regulated the march of the order walked close to the boat, in which the procession. A high functionary of the priestly chief mourners, the nearest female relations of the deceased, stood or sat at either end of the sarcophagus; and sometimes his widow, holding a child in her arms, united her lamentations with prayers for her tender offspring, who added its tribute of sorrow to that of its afflicted mother."*

The rich sarcophagus was decked with flowers. Sometimes the mummy rested on the outside exposed to view, but more frequently it was enclosed in the case - a panel occasions to show the head of the mummy. of which was, however, taken out on some relations and friends, leaning on long sticks, The procession wound up with the male and either beating their breasts or walking

in solemn silence.

It was, no doubt, such a procession as the above which went up to Abel-Mizraim with the remains of Jacob; and Canaan probably never before and never since saw a funeral conducted with such pomp and splendour. None can doubt that the funeral of Joseph himself, when he was consigned to the tomb wherein he lay until the exodus, was of unparalleled grandeur. And here let us note, in passing, that there is some reason to think that this tomb has been found.†

of the deceased and of his ancestors had been kept, while receiving the funeral liturgies previous to burial, and which sometimes contained the images of the gods. They also carried daggers, bows, sandals, and fans, each man having a kerchief or napkin on his shoulder. Next came a table of offerings, fauteuils, couches, boxes, and It may be imagined that, having described a chariot; and then the charioteer with a pair the funeral procession, we have completed of horses yoked in another car, which he drove the "last scene of all that ends this strange as he followed on foot, in token of respect to his eventful history," but such is not the case; late master. After these were men carrying there remains behind a custom more remarkgold vases on a table, with other offerings, able than any other part of the obsequies. boxes, and a large case upon a sledge borne on Between the road over which the mummy poles by four men, superintended by two functionaries of the priestly order; then others bear- travelled as above and the tomb which had ing small images of his ancestors, arms, fans, been prepared for it, there intervened an obstacle. Every nome (or Egyptian provthe sceptres, signets, collars, necklaces, and other things appertaining to the king, in whose ince) had its sacred lake barring the passage service he held an important office. To these to the tomb until he whose mummy sought succeeded the bearers of a sacred boat, and the to be at rest had established his character as mysterious eye of Osiris as God of Stability, so one deserving to lie among the worthies of common or funereal monuments the same Egypt who had gone before him. There which was placed over the incision in the side was a sacred boat and a boatman (the of the body when embalmed, was the emblem of Egyptian word for which is Charon ‡), but Egypt, and was frequently used as a sort of before the mummy could be embarked, or amulet, and deposited in the tombs. Others car- the boatman would pull a stroke, the permit ried the well-known small images of blue pottery, representing the deceased under the form of Osiris, and the bird emblematic of the soul. Following these were seven or more men bearing upon staves or wooden yokes cases filled with

* Wilkinson's "Manners and Customs," &c. † Osburn's" Monumental History."

ance.

Of course the original of our Stygian acquaint

of forty-two assessors, who had been ex- from the throne in the midst of the waters pressly summoned, and who stood in a grave rises the undying Lotus, bearing on the marsemicircle on the bank, had to be obtained. gin of its blossom the four Genii; we see it. There might or might not be an accuser or if rejected, quailing before the sceptre of accusers present. If there were, he or they Osiris, inclined towards it in token of conwere bound to prove that the deceased had demnation, and doomed to return to earth led an evil life, on pain of the severest pun- under the form of a pig, or some other unishment in case of failure. If there were clean animal. "Placed in a boat, it is reno accuser, still the character of the dead moved, under the charge of two monkeys, had to be examined on every point seriatim from the precincts of Amenthe, all commuof Egyptian morality. His acts, his omis-nication with which is figuratively cut off by sions, his example, were rigidly passed in a man who hews away the earth with an axe review, and it was not until the assessors had after its passage; and the commencement decided that he was altogether worthy that of a new term of life is indicated by those his mummy could be lowered into the sacred monkeys." ark. Should the sentence be against the One of the sacred books, the Book of the dead, or should he be proved to be heavily Dead, often found in the wrappings of the in debt, the body had to be returned by the mummy or about the tomb, is a most extraway it came, amid the confusion and grief ordinary document, having reference to the of all the family, and kept concealed, until passage of the soul. It is certainly not yet the production of further evidence, the ex-understood - perhaps it is not accurately piation of any offences that admitted of be-read- but it may contain valuable informaing cancelled, or, in the worst case, the tion on the subject of Egyptian belief. The lapse of time, enabled the afflicted family wonderful pains which this people took to do to obtain for it the shelter of the tomb. battle with the worm and the elements, and Pharaoh himself was not exempt from this the motives which incited them thereto, ordeal, and there were certainly instances were probably known to the learned St. where the royal mummy was refused a pas- Paul, whose answers to the question, "How sage. By such cases we get a little insight are the dead raised up? and with what body into the moral forces by which a Pharaoh do they come ?" may have been addressed was kept in equilibrio. But supposing all not only to contemptible pagans, but also to to go well, no sooner was the testamur is- this erudite people, whose desires were adsued, and the candidate pronounced to have mirable, but whose knowledge was warped passed this his "great go," than the as- and erring. How applicable to them the sembled crowd abandoning the mournings sentence, "Thou fool, that which thou and lamentations and woe which they had so sowest is not quickened except it die!" long indulged, broke out into acclamations, And now, all unsatisfied, first, that. we extolled the glory of the deceased, and re- may say no more, and, secondly, that we joiced that he was to remain for ever in have so feebly and imperfectly presented a Amenthe with the virtuous and approved. few glimpses of a most interesting subject, In the entrance passage, usually, of the we take our leave of these mighty men of tomb, but certainly in some part of the old of whom we have read and thought till tomb, was registered the whole acquittal of they seem as well known to us as the charthe dead: how he had been able, by his acters in King Henry IV., or the actors representatives, and to the satisfaction of in "Ivanhoe." The pleasure of this achis judges, to assert his innocence of all the quaintance we recommend to all who may sins known to the Egyptian law as they were have taken the trouble to wander with us called over one by one. through these pages, assuring them that it is no ignis fatuus, no lame and impotent conclusion in pursuit of which we would engage them, but that the wonders inside the caravan immeasurably surpass the promise of the wretched canvas which we have displayed; in support of which assertion let us close with these words of Mr. Kenrick: • We possess means for ascertaining the form, physiognomy, and colour of the ancient Egyptians, such as no other people has bequeathed to us. We find in Greek, Roman, or British sepulchres only the ashes, or at most the skeleton, of the occupant; but the Egyptian reappears from his grotto, after

The real import of the ceremony was of far more concern than could attach to any purely earthly verdict. The trial which was seen and heard was only the shadow or reflection of the unseen awful challenge at the bar of Osiris; the result was believed to represent the more terrible result which was recorded there. The fate of the soul has been depicted for us as much in detail as that of the body. We see it conducted to the gates of Amenthe where Cerberus is warder; we see it weighed in the balance; we see it, if accepted, taken into the blessed presence of Osiris, Isis, and Nepthys, where

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