1004 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



a special cemetery for cats, wliicli was recently identified at the modern 

 Zagaziy. Diodorus Siculus says' that wlien a cat died all the inmates 

 of the house shaved their eyebrows as a sign of mourning.^ 



Book o'f the dead. — A series of original fragments and a facsimile 

 of g-n Egyptian papyrus at the British Museum in London. The 

 so-called Egyptian "Books of the Dead" are collections of religious 

 texts, hymns, invocations, prayers to the gods, etc, intended for the use 

 and protection of the dead in the world beyond the grave. The original 

 of the one referred to was found in the tomb of Ani, "Royal Scribe" 

 and Scribe of the Sacred Eevenue of all the gods of Thebes, "who is 

 accompanied on his way through the divers parts of the realm of the 

 dead by his wife. Tutu. The hieroglyphic text is accompanied by 

 colored vignettes, which depict the various scenes through which the 

 deceased has to pass in the nether world, as his appearance before 

 Osiris, the Supreme Judge of the dead, the weighing of the heart of the 

 departed against the goddess of Truth, etc. The prayers and magical 

 formuhe were written out on a roll of papyrus and bound up inside the 

 bandages of the mummy. 



Two SOARABAEi. — The Scarahceufi AegypUorum, or Ateuchus Sacet\ 

 that is, the great cockchafer found in tropical countries, was regarded 

 in Egypt as the symbol of the god Kheper, who was termed by the 

 Egyptians "the father of the gods," and who was later identified with 

 the rising sun. As the sun by his daily revolution and reappearance 

 typified the return of the soul to the body, the scarabfcus, which is in 

 Egyptian likewise called Kheper, was the emblem of the revivication of 

 the body and the immortality of the soul. Models of Scarab;ei, made 

 of various kinds of materials, usually inscribed with names of gods, 

 kings, and other persons, and with magical legends and devices, were 

 buried with the nuimmies (placed on the heart or the finger of the dead) 

 and were also woru by the living, principally as charms. The insects 

 themselves have also beeu found in coffins. 



Egyptian brick. — Sun-baked brick from an early tomb, Thebes, 

 Egypt. The usual dimensions of an Egyptian brick was from 20 or 17 

 to 14J inches in length, 8f to 6i inches in width, and 7 to 4^ inches 

 thick. It consists of ordinary soil mixed with chopped straw and sun- 

 baked. This method of making bricks is alluded to in Exodus v, 18, 

 where the oppressed Israelites are told " there shall no straw be given 

 you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks." In the ruins of Pithom, one 

 of the cities in which the Israelites were employed, three kinds of brick 

 were discovered, some with stubble, some with straw, and some with- 

 out. Among the paintings of Thebes, one on a tomb represents brick- 

 making captives with " taskmasters," who, armed with sticks, are 

 receiving the " tale of bricks" and urging on the work. Judging from 

 the monuments, the process of making sun-dried bricks was much the 

 same as in modern times. The clay or mud was mixed with the neces- 



' Book i, 83. 2 E. A. W. Budge, The Mummy, pp. 355-358. 



