428 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XVI. 



contracted. These last however, if then- children's 

 children happened to be prosperous, were released 

 from the impediments of their creditors, and at 

 length received the ceremony of a magnificent 

 burial. It was, indeed, most solemnly established 

 in Egypt that parents and ancestors should have 

 a more marked token of respect paid them by 

 their family, after they had been transferred to 

 their everlasting habitations. Hence originated 

 the custom of depositing the bodies of their de- 

 ceased parents * as pledges for the payment of 

 borrowed money ; those who failed to redeem those 

 pledges being subject to the heaviest disgrace, and 

 deprived of burial after their own death." 



The grief and shame felt by the family, when 

 the rites of burial had been refused, were exces- 

 sive. They not only considered the mortification 

 consequent upon so public an exposure, and the 

 triumph given to their enemies ; but the awful 

 sentence foretold the misery which had befallen 

 tlie soul of the deceased in a future state. They 

 beheld him excluded from those mansions of the 

 blessed, to which it was the primary object of 

 every one to be admitted ; his memory was 

 stained in this world witli indelible disgrace ; 

 and a belief in transmigration suggested to them 

 the possibility of his soul being condemned to 

 inhabit the body of some unclean animal. 



It is true that the duration of this punishment 

 was limited according to the extent of the crimes 



* Diodor. loc. cit. Hcrodot. ii. 136. Vidr siiprd, Vol.11, p. 51. 

 Lucian says " a brother or father." Essay on Grief. 



