jar or vessel in which the embalmers placed the viscera of the deceased. This jar, he thought, was held up to the gods, who were assured by the priest that it contained the sources of all the sins committed by the deceased during his lifetime, and therefore the sole portion of him deserving of future punishment. Now the object on the amulets is not a vase at all, but a representation of the uterus of the goddess Isis, or of one of her many forms, and the legend on the reverse of the amulet proves this; it reads: TACCON THN MHTPAN THE ΔΕΙΝΑ EIC ΤΟΝ ΙΔΙΑΝ ΤΟΠΟΝ & ΤΟΝ ΚΥΚΛΟΝ ΤΟΥ HAEIOY. "Place the womb of Such-and-such a one in its proper place, O circle of the sun." Thus the amulet was intended to protect the woman who wore it from "a frequent complaint in ancient times, owing to the abuse of the hot bath " (King, op. cit., p. 153). Round the edge of the obverse is an inscription, which was probably added by one of the owners of the amulet; it reads: ΕΤΡΑ ΠΙΝΝΑΠΟ ΚΑΙΝΕΙΑ ΛΛΥΧΝΟΥ WPWZOEPONXW. Other amulets on which the vase of Isis is represented are B.M. G. 238 and 479. On the latter the Khnoubis figure is called IAW or IAWI, and on the reverse, below the bird and altar and double SS, are the two names OPWPIOYO and IAW. The serpent that surrounds the scene on each of these gems suggests that they were used by the Ophites, perhaps exclusively. The black stone oval (B.M. G. 486) on which is cut a beetle with the bearded head of a god is probably another Ophite amulet; in this example eleven rays proceed from the head, and round them is written EIAAMY, the CEMEC being omitted. As an example of the mixture of Indian and Egyptian gods B.M. G. 251 may be noted, for it also is an Ophite amulet. On the obverse stands a deity with three faces and three pairs of arms and hands. On her right side is a figure of Harpokrates, and on her left is the lion-headed serpent Khnoubis; on the reverse is the snake coiled into a circle, within which are the seven stars of the Seven Planets or of the Seven Heavens.

In the space available here it is not possible even to summarize the inscriptions that are found on Gnostic amulets, and that up to the present have defied all attempts to translate them. But enough is now known about them to justify the statement that some of them contain garbled forms of the names of the Thirty Aeons and their rulers mixed up with the Seven Vowels arranged in mystic order, and some of them magical names such as are found in the two Books of Ieû, and others series of letters, each letter of which is the first of a word in some Oriental language. Gnostic amulets were copied largely in the Middle Ages, and the names of gods, Aeons, and Archangels became greatly corrupted, and formulae also, for there seems to be little doubt that Abracadabra, the great word of power used by wizards, is derived from ABAANA ANAɅBA, as King and others have stated.

AN EGYPTIAN FUNERAL IN THE DYNASTIC PERIOD How the bodies of the slaves, male and female, throughout the country, and those of the destitute (and the maimed, the halt, the blind, and the half-witted, who must have existed in the great towns like Memphis, Heliopolis, Hânês, Abydos, Thebes, etc.) were disposed of is not known for a certainty. But judging from the well-known customs of the peoples of Africa before the coming of Islâm, we may assume that the destitute dead were carried out into the desert, or to the slopes of the hills, and left there for the hyenas and desert wolves, and jackals, to dispose of. In regions where the hills came down to the river-bank they were probably thrown into the Nile and became the food of the crocodiles. The bodies of the poorer members of the fallâḥ, or peasant, class, also must have been treated in much the same way. In fact, large numbers of people were never "buried " at all in our sense of the word, for all the land on each side of the Nile was required for agricultural purposes and any and every part of it was far too valuable to turn into a cemetery. The body of the ordinary citizen was either dried in the sun, or washed with a solution of natron, and then placed in a hollow in the sand on the edge of the desert, or thrust into a cave in the skirts of the hills. In either case the wild beasts must have dragged the dead from their resting-places and devoured them. Sometimes the body was wrapped loosely in a coarse linen cloth and buried in a hole dug in the sand, with his stick to support his steps, and his sandals to protect his feet during his long journey to the Other World. Nobles and men of high rank and authority in the community, and wealthy civilians, were really "buried," i.e., they were laid in graves or caves in the hills which were carefully guarded, and under the early dynasties their bodies were wrapped in skins, or placed in baskets, or in earthenware chests, or in rudely made boxes. It is probable that the deceased, when carried to his grave, was accompanied by his kinsfolk and friends, whose number depended upon his social importance and wealth, and who, as they went, intoned praises of him, whilst the women of his house bewailed their loss with shrill cries. Whether any ceremonies, religious or magical, were performed at the grave of the ordinary citizen is not known, but under the earliest dynasties, at least, only kings and royal personages, and priestly and civil officials, and hereditary landowners, could afford to have tombs and to have adequate funerary rites and ceremonies performed when they were deposited in them.

The funeral of a great official must have been a very elaborate affair, especially under the XVIIIth dynasty, when Egypt was filled with the gold of the Sûdân and the tribute of Western Asia, and it is impossible for us to realize to the full the magnificence of the funerary equipment and the pomp that attended the burial of the mummy of a really great king and conqueror like Thothmes III. Treating of the burial of a king in Egypt, Diodorus says (I, 72), that when a

king died all the inhabitants of the country wept and rent their garments; the temples were closed, and the people abstained from sacrifices and celebrated no festival for a period of seventy-two days. Crowds of men and women, about two or three hundred in number, went round about the streets with mud on their heads, and with their garments knotted like girdles below the breasts (owdóvas úπоkáтw τŵν μаστŵν), singing dirges twice daily in praise of the dead. They denied themselves wheat, they ate no animal food, and they abstained from wine and dainty fare. No one dared to make use of baths, or unguents, or to recline upon couches, or even to partake of the pleasures of love. The seventy-two days were passed in grief and mourning as for the death of a beloved child. Meanwhile, the funeral paraphernalia was made ready, and on the last day of mourning the body, placed in a coffin, was laid at the entrance to the tomb, and according to law, judgment was passed upon the acts of the king during his life. Every one had the power to make an accusation against the king. The priests pronounced a funeral oration over the body, and declared the noble works of the king, and if the opinion of the assembled multitude agreed with that of the priests, and the king had led a blameless life, they testified their approval openly; if, on the other hand, the life of the king had been a bad one, they expressed their disapprobation by loud murmurs. Through the opposition of the people many kings have been deprived of meet and proper burial, and kings are accustomed to exercise justice, not only because they fear the disapprobation of their subjects, but also because they fear that after death their bodies may be maltreated, and their memory cursed for ever.

It is very doubtful if the above description of the mourning is not somewhat exaggerated, and there appears to be no authority in Egyptian inscriptions for the statement that many kings were deprived of their meet and proper burial because of the disapproval of their past lives shown by the people. This account by Diodorus is more valuable for the indication of the great and solemn respect that was shown to dead kings, as sons of the god Rā and as lords of the land of Egypt, than for its strict accuracy of detail. The customs observed at the burial of kings would be respectfully imitated at the funerals of the nobles and officials of his court, and the account, by the same writer, of what happened after the mummy of an Egyptian gentleman was prepared for burial, may next be mentioned.

According to Diodorus (I, 92), when the body is ready to be buried, the relatives give notice to the judges and the friends of the deceased, and inform them that the funeral will take place on a certain day, and that the body will pass over the lake; and straightway the judges, forty in number,1 come and seat themselves in a semi-circle above the lake. Then the men who have been commissioned to

1 Is it possible that Diodorus has confused the forty judges at the lake with the forty-two judges or assessors of the Book of the Dead, before each of whom the deceased was supposed to declare that he had not committed a certain sin?

Y

prepare a boat called Bâpis,1 bring it to the lake, and they set it afloat under the charge of a pilot called Charon. And they pretend that Orpheus, travelling in Egypt in ancient times, was present at a ceremony of this kind, and that he drew his fable of the infernal regions partly from his remembrance of this ceremony, and partly from his imagination. Before the coffin containing the dead man was placed in the boat on the lake, every person had the right to bring accusations against him. If any accuser succeeded in showing that the deceased had led a bad life, the judges made a decree which deprived the body of legal burial; if, on the other hand, the accusation was found to be unjust, the person who brought it was compelled to pay heavy damages. If no one stood forth to bring an accusation, or if an accusation seemed calumnious, the relatives of the deceased ceased to mourn and began to praise the dead man and his virtues, and to entreat the gods of the infernal regions to admit him into the place reserved for good men. The Egyptians never praised the birth of a man, as did the Greeks, for they believed that all men are equally noble. The people being gathered together, add their cries of joy, and utter wishes that the deceased may enjoy everlasting life in the underworld in the company of the blessed. Those who have private burial places lay the bodies of their dead in the places set apart for them; but those who have not, build a new chamber in their house, and set the body in it fixed upright against the wall. Those who are deprived of burial, either because they lie under the ban of an accusation, or because they have not paid their debts, are merely laid in their own houses. It happens sometimes that the younger members of a family, having become richer, pay the debts of their ancestors, secure the removal of the condemnatory sentence upon them, and give them most sumptuous funerals. The great honours that are paid to the dead by the Egyptians form the most solemn ceremonies. As a guarantee for a debt, it is a customary thing to deposit the bodies of dead parents, and the greatest disgrace and privation from burial wait upon those who redeem not such sacred pledges.

In this account also there are many details given for which proof is still wanting from the Egyptian monuments.

An attempt may now be made to describe briefly what happened after death to the body of a man of high rank who departed this life at Thebes towards the end of the XVIIIth or beginning of the XIXth dynasty-that is to say, about B.C. 1450. The facts are all known, and it is only necessary to focus them on the person of one We must imagine, then, that we are living on the east bank of

man.

2 Thus Orpheus brought back from his travels in Egypt the ceremonies, and the greater part of the mystic rites celebrated in memory of the courses of Ceres, and the whole of the myth of hell. The difference between the feasts of Bacchus and of those of Osiris exists only in name, and the same may be said of the mysteries of Isis and those of Ceres. Diodorus, I, 96.

the Nile, near the temple of Amen-Ra, in the Northern Apt at Thebes, in the XVth century before Christ. One morning at dawn, even before the officials who conduct the dawn services in the temples are astir, we are awakened by loud cries of grief and lamentation, and on making inquiries are told that Ani, the great scribe of the offerings of the gods in the temple of Amen-Ra, is dead. As he was the receiver of the revenues of the gods of Abydos, as well as of ÅmenRā of Thebes, his death naturally causes great excitement in the temples and the immediate neighbourhood. His forefathers for generations have been temple-officers of the highest rank, and it is certain that his funeral will be a great event, and that numbers of the hereditary aristocracy and government officials will assist at the ceremony. He leaves no wife to mourn for him, for she is already dead, and is now lying in a chamber of a rock-hewn tomb, not yet finished, however, nine miles away across the river, awaiting the coming of her husband. She was called Tutu, and belonged to one of the oldest and most honourable families in Thebes, and was a member of the famous college of singers of Amen-Rã, and also of the choir of ladies, each one of whom rattled a sistrum or beat a tambourine in the temple of that god. The hewing of this tomb was begun under Ani's directions many years before his death, and the work had gone on year by year for several years; Ani spared neither trouble nor expense. Ani was probably an old man when he died. He was a learned man, and knew the religious literature of Egypt well; he himself wrote a fine, bold hand, and was, it seems, no mean artist with his pencil. He was a tried servant of the king, and loved him well, but he loved his god Amen more, and was very jealous for his honour and for the glory of his worship in the temple of the Northern Apt. All his ancestors had been in the service of the god and he, or his father, had seen the disastrous consequences of the reign of Amenḥetep IV, who tried to overthrow the supremacy of Amen-Ra, the King of the Gods. It was even said that the oldest of them had seen Amen-who, until the expulsion of the Hyksos by the kings of Thebes, had occupied the position of a mere local deitysuddenly become the national god of Egypt. Whether Ani believed in his innermost heart any or all of the official religion is another matter. His official position brought him into contact with the temporal rather than the spiritual affairs of the Egyptian religion, and whatever doubts he may have had in matters of belief, or concerning the efficacy of the magic of his day, he professed to be a devout follower of Osiris, and died in the hope of resurrection through him.

For some days past it had been seen that Ani's death was to be expected, and many of his colleagues in the temple had come to visit him from time to time, one bringing a charm, another a decoction of herbs, etc., and a few had taken it in turns to stay in his room for some hours at a time. One night his illness took a decidedly serious turn, and early in the morning, a short time before daybreak, when,