f the sun and the Soul throughout the twenty-four hours of the day
and night. Each hour is represented, as also the domain of each hour with
its circumscribed boundary, the door of which is guarded by a huge serpent.
These serpents have their various names, as "Fire-Face," "Flaming Eye,"
"Evil Eye," etc. The fate of Souls was decided in the third hour of the
day. They were weighed by the god Thoth, who consigned them to their future
abode according to the verdict of the scales. The sinful Soul was handed
over to the cynocephalous-ape assessors of the infernal tribunal, who
hunted and scourged it, after first changing it into a sow, or some other
impure animal. The righteous Soul, on the contrary, passed in the fifth
hour into the company of his fellows, whose task it was to cultivate the
Fields of Aalu and reap the corn of the celestial harvest, after which they
took their pleasure under the guardianship of the good genii. After the
fifth hour, the heavenly ocean became a vast battlefield. The gods of
light pursued, captured, and bound the serpent Apapi, and at the
twelfth hour they strangled him. But this triumph was not of long duration.
Scarcely had the sun achieved this victory when his bark was borne by the
tide into the realm of the night hours, and from that moment he was
assailed, like Virgil and Dante at the Gates of Hell, by frightful sounds
and clamourings. Each circle had its voice, not to be confounded with the
voices of other circles. Here the sound was as an immense humming of wasps;
yonder it was as the lamentations of women for their husbands, and the
howling of she-beasts for their mates; elsewhere it was as the rolling of
the thunder. The sarcophagus, as well as the walls, was covered with these
scenes of joyous or sinister import. It was generally of red or black
granite. As it was put in hand last of all, it frequently happened that the
sculptors had not time to finish it. When finished, however, the scenes and
texts with which it was covered contained an epitome of the whole
catacomb.[34] Thus, lying in his sarcophagus, the dead man found his future
destinies depicted thereon, and learned to understand the blessedness of
the gods. The tombs of private persons were not often so elaborately
decorated. Two tombs of the period of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty--that of
Petamenoph at Thebes and that of Bakenrenf at Memphis--compete in this
respect, however, with the royal catacombs. Their walls are not only
s