be the outer
coffin of the mummy. This sarcophagus had also the form and features of
the dead pharaoh. It was covered with inscriptions, and pictures of
people praying, of sacred birds and also scarabs.

On the 17th of Famenut, the mummy, together with its chapel and
sarcophagus, was taken from the quarter of the dead to the palace and
placed in the largest hall there.

This hall was soon filled with priests, who chanted funeral hymns, with
attendants and servants of the departed, and above all with his women,
who screamed so vehemently that their cries were heard across the
river.

"O lord! Thou our lord!" cried they, "why art Thou leaving us? Thou so
kind, so beautiful. Thou art silent now, Thou who didst speak to us so
willingly. Thou didst incline to our society, but today Thou art far
from us."

During this time the priests sang,

Chorus I. "I am Turn, who alone exists."

Chorus II. "I am Re, in his earliest splendor."

Chorus I. "I am the god who creates himself."

Chorus II. "Who gives his own name to himself, and no one among the
gods can restrain him."

Chorus I. "I know the name of the great god who is there."

Chorus II. "For I am the great bird Benut which tests the existent."
["Book of the Dead."]

After two days of groans and devotions a great car in the form of a
boat was drawn to the front of the palace. The ends of this car were
adorned with ostrich plumes and rams' heads, while above a costly
baldachin towered an eagle, and there also was the ureus serpent,
symbol of the pharaoh's dominion. On this car was placed the sacred
mummy, in spite of the wild resistance of court women. Some of them
held to the coffin, others implored the priests not to take their good
lord from them, still others scratched their own faces, tore their
hair, and even beat the men who carried the remains of the pharaoh.

The outcry was terrible.

At last the car, when it had received the divine body, moved on amid a
multitude of people who occupied the immense space from the palace to
the river. There were people smeared with mud, torn, covered with
mourning rags, people who cried in heaven-piercing voices. At the side
of these, according to mourning ritual, were disposed, along the whole
road, choruses.

Chorus I. "To the West, to the mansion of Osiris, to the West art Thou
going, Thou who wert the best among men, who didst hate the untrue."

Chorus II. "Going West! There will not be another who will so love