The condemned soul
is either scourged back to the earth straightway, to live again in
the form of a vile animal, as some of the emblems appear to
denote; or plunged into the tortures of a horrid hell of fire and
devils below, as numerous engravings set forth; or driven into the
atmosphere, to be vexed and tossed by tempests, violently whirled
in blasts and clouds, till its sins are expiated, and another
probation granted through a renewed existence in human form.

We have two accounts of the Egyptian divisions of the universe.
According to the first view, they conceived the creation to
consist of three grand departments. First came the earth, or zone
of trial, where men live on probation. Next was the atmosphere, or
zone of temporal

14 Das Todtenbuch der Agypter, edited with an introduction by Dr.
Lepsius.

15 Ch. ix. of Pettigrew's History of Egyptian Mummies.

16 Champollion's Letter, dated Thebes, May 16, 1829. An abstract
of this letter may be found in Stuart's trans. of Greppo's Essay
on Champollion's Hieroglyphic System, appendix, note N.

17 Basnage, Hist. of the Jews, lib. ii. ch. 12, sect. 19.

punishment, where souls are afflicted for their sins. The ruler of
this girdle of storms was Pooh, the overseer of souls in penance.
Such a notion is found in some of the later Greek philosophers,
and in the writings of the Alexandrian Jews, who undoubtedly drew
it from the priestly science of Egypt. Every one will recollect
how Paul speaks of "the prince of the power off the air." And
Shakspeare makes the timid Claudio shrink from the verge of death
with horror, lest his soul should, through ages,

"Be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless
violence round about The pendent world."

After their purgation in this region, all the souls live again on
earth by transmigration.18 The third realm was in the serene blue
sky among the stars, the zone of blessedness, where the accepted
dwell in immortal peace and joy. Eusebius says, "The Egyptians
represented the universe by two circles, one within the other, and
a serpent with the head of a hawk twining his folds around them,"
thus forming three spheres, earth, firmament, divinity.

But the representation most frequent and imposing is that which
pictures the creation simply as having the earth in the centre,
and the sun with his attendants as circulating around it in the
brightness of the superior, and the darkness of the infernal,
firmament. S