400 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XVI. 



per chamber. The coffins were deposited in pits 

 in the plain, or in recesses excavated at the side of 

 a rock, which were closed with masonry, as the pits 

 within the large tombs. Mummies of the lower 

 orders wereburied together in a common repository; 

 and the bodies of those whose relations had not 

 the means of paying for their funeral, after being 

 " merely cleansed by some vegetable decoctions, 

 and kept in an alkaline solution for seventy days*,'* 

 were wra})ped up in coarse cloth, in mats, or in a 

 bundle of palm sticks, and deposited in the earth. 



Some tombs were of great extent ; and when a 

 wealthy individual bought the ground, and had 

 an opportunity during a long life of making his 

 family sepulchre according to his wishes, it was 

 frequently decorated in the most sumptuous man- 

 ner. And so much consequence did the Egyptians 

 attach to them, that people in humble circum- 

 stances made every effort to save sufficient to pro- 

 cure a handsome tomb, and defray the expenses of 

 a suitable funeral. This species of pomp increased 

 as refinement and luxury advanced ; and in the 

 time of Amasis and other monarchs of the 26tli 

 Dynasty, the funeral expenses so fu' exceeded 

 what it had been customary to incur during the 

 reigns of the early Pharaohs, that the tombs of 

 some individuals far surpassed in extent, if not in 

 splendour of decoration, those of the kings them- 

 selves. 



Many adorned their entrances with gardens, 

 in which flovv^ers were reared by the hand of an 



* Herodot. ii. 88. Vide infra, on embalming, p. 454. 459. 



