720 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



provided thee with land-surveyors and husbandmen, to deliver the 

 corn for thy revenues.&quot; 



Both which extracts exhibit the successor as being, in some 

 sort, a steward for the deceased, administering on his behalf. 

 So was it in an adjacent empire. Assyria s^ &quot; first rulers 

 were called Patesi or Viceroys of Assur;&quot; and an inscrip 

 tion of Tiglath-Pileser says : 



&quot;Ashur (and) the great gods, the guardians of my kingdom, who 

 have government and laws to my dominions, and ordered an enlarged, 

 frontier to their territory, having committed to (my) hand their valiant 

 and warlike servants, I have subdued the lands and the peoples and 

 the strong places, and the Kings who were hostile to Ashur.&quot; 



If now we remember that in Egypt the lea, or double of the 

 dead man, was expected to return after a long period to 

 re-animate his mummy and resume his original life if we 

 recall, too, the case of the Peruvians, who, similarly pro 

 viding elaborately for the welfare of departed persons, 

 similarly believed that they would eventually return if we 

 find ourselves thus carried back to the primitive notion that 

 death is simply a long-suspended animation ; we may suspect 

 the original conception to be that when he revives, a man will 

 reclaim whatever he originally had ; and that therefore who 

 ever holds his property, holds it subject to his prior claim 

 holds it as a kind of tenant who may be dispossessed by the 

 owner, and w r hose sacred duty meanwhile is to administer 

 it primarily for the owner s benefit. 



601. Be this so or not, however, the facts grouped as 

 above, clearly show how, among the progenitors of the 

 civilized peoples of the Old World, as well as among peoples 

 who still retain early institutions, there arose those arrange 

 ments of the family-cult which existed, or still exist. 



What has happened where descent in the female line 

 obtains, is not clear. I have met with no statements show 

 ing that in societies characterized by this usage, the duty of 

 ministering to the double of the dead man devolved on one 

 of his children rather than on others. But the above facts 

 show that, where the system of counting kinship through 



