430 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XVI. 



which the deceased is made to enumerate all the 

 sins forbidden by the Egyptian law, and to assert 

 his innocence of each. They are supposed by 

 Champollion to amount to forty-two, being equal in 

 number to the assessors who were destined to ex- 

 amine the deceased at his final judgment *, re- 

 specting the peculiar crime which it was his pro- 

 vince to punish. 



I have stated t that every large city, as Thebes, 

 Memphis, and other places, had its lake, at which 

 the same ceremonies were practised ; and it is pro- 

 bable, from what Diodorus says of the "lake of 

 the nome^^ that the capital of each province had 

 one in its immediate vicinity, to which the funeral 

 procession of all who died within the jurisdiction of 

 the nomarcli was obliged to repair. Even when 

 the priests granted a dispensation for the removal 

 of a body to another town, as was sometimes done 

 in favour of those who desired to be buried at 

 Abydust and other places, the previous ceremony 

 of passing through this ordeal was doubtless re- 

 quired at the lake of their own province. 



Those persons who, from their extreme poverty, 

 had no place prepared for receiving their body 

 when denied tlie privilege of passing the sacred 

 lake, appear to have been interred on tlie shores 

 they were forbidden to leave ; and I have found 

 the bones of many buried near the site of the lake 

 of Tiiebcs, whicli a))})eared to be of bodies imper- 

 fectly preserved, as of persons who could not afford 



* Supm, p. 70. t Supra, j). 420. 



X r\dc Vol. I. (2(1 Scries) p. .3+0. 



