place of business was carefully separated from the rest of the
establishment, which none but those who were engaged in the processes
carried on there were on any account permitted to enter. The kolchytes
formed a closely-limited guild at the head of which stood a certain
number of priests, and from among them the masters of the many thousand
members were chosen. This guild was highly respected, even the
taricheutes, who were entrusted with the actual work of embalming, could
venture to mix with the other citizens, although in Thebes itself people
always avoided them with a certain horror; only the paraschites, whose
duty it was to open the body, bore the whole curse of uncleanness.
Certainly the place where these people fulfilled their office was dismal
enough.

The stone chamber in which the bodies were opened, and the halls in which
they were prepared with salt, had adjoining them a variety of
laboratories and depositaries for drugs and preparations of every
description.

In a court-yard, protected from the rays of the sun only by an awning,
was a large walled bason, containing a solution of natron, in which the
bodies were salted, and they were then dried in a stone vault,
artificially supplied with hot air.

The little wooden houses of the weavers, as well as the work-shops of the
case-joiners and decorators, stood in numbers round the pattern-room; but
the farthest off, and much the largest of the buildings of the
establishment, was a very long low structure, solidly built of stone and
well roofed in, where the prepared bodies were enveloped in their
cerements, tricked out in amulets, and made ready for their journey to
the next world. What took place in this building--into which the laity
were admitted, but never for more than a few minutes--was to the last
degree mysterious, for here the gods themselves appeared to be engaged
with the mortal bodies.

Out of the windows which opened on the street, recitations, hymns, and
lamentations sounded night and day. The priests who fulfilled their
office here wore masks like the divinities of the under-world. Many were
the representatives of Anubis, with the jackal-head, assisted by boys
with masks of the so-called child-Horus. At the head of each mummy stood
or squatted a wailing-woman with the emblems of Nephthys, and one at its
feet with those of Isis.

Every separate limb of the deceased was dedicated to a particular
divinity by the aid of holy oils, charms, and s