take advantage of the custom, so associated with sacred
sentiments, and throw theological sanctions over it, shroud it in
mystery, and secure a monopoly of the power and profit arising
from it. It is not improbable, too, as has been suggested, that
hygienic considerations, expressing themselves in political laws
and priestly precepts, may at first have had an influence in
establishing the habit of embalming, to prevent the pestilences
apt to arise in such a climate from the decay of animal
substances.

There is great diversity of opinion among Egyptologists on this
point. One thinks that embalming was supposed to keep the soul in
the body until after the funeral judgment and interment, but that,
when the corpse was laid in its final receptacle, the soul
proceeded to accompany the sun in its daily and nocturnal circuit,
or to transmigrate through various animals and deities. Another
imagines that the process of embalming was believed to secure the
repose of the soul in the other world, exempt from
transmigrations, so long as the body was kept from decay.11
Perhaps the different notions on this subject attributed by modern
authors to the Egyptians may all have prevailed among them at
different times or among distinct sects. But it seems most likely,
as we have said, that embalming first arose from physical and
sentimental considerations naturally operating, rather than from
any

8 Lib. iii. cap. 24.

9 Kenrick, Ancient Egypt, vol. i. ch. xxi. sect. iii.

10 Lib. i. cap. 7.

11 Library of Entertaining Knowledge, vol. ii. ch. iii.

theological doctrine carefully devised; although, after the
priesthood appropriated the business, it is altogether probable
that they interwove it with an artificial and elaborate system of
sacerdotal dogmas, in which was the hiding of the national power.

The second question that arises is, What was the significance of
the funeral ceremonies celebrated by the Egyptians over their
dead? When the body had been embalmed, it was presented before a
tribunal of forty two judges sitting in state on the eastern
borders of the lake Acherusia. They made strict inquiry into the
conduct and character of the deceased. Any one might make
complaint against him, or testify in his behalf. If it was found
that he had been wicked, had died in debt, or was otherwise
unworthy, he was deprived of honorable burial and ignominiously
thrown into a ditch. This was called Tartar, from the wailings the
senten