462 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XVI. 



and to bury it in a consecrated tomb. None of 

 the friends or relations were permitted to touch 

 it ; this privilege was accorded to the priests of the 

 Nile alone, who interred it witli their own hands, 

 as if it had been something more than the corpse 

 of a human being." 



Another reason assigned for their embalming the 

 dead (independent of those already mentioned *) 

 has been supposed to be a belief that the soul re- 

 mained in the body as long as the latter was pre- 

 served, and was thus prevented from passing to 

 any other. t But this is directly opposed to the 

 known opinion of the Egyptians, which, as we 

 see even from the sculptures, was that the soul 

 left the body at the moment of death ; and, ac- 

 cording to Herodotus, they asserted that having 

 quitted the body, it returned again after a cer- 

 tain period, t 



Cassian gives another reason, still more at vari- 

 ance with truth, — "that they Avere unable to bury 

 their dead during the inundation ; " which is at 

 once disproved by the fact of the tombs being ac- 

 cessible at all seasons of the year. Herodotus § 



* Supra, p. 445. 



-|- Serviiis ;vcl Vir";. Mn. iii. v. 68. " jEgyptii periti sapientiae condita 

 diutius rescrvant cadavera, scilicet ut aninia multo tempore pei'diiret, et 

 corpori sit obnoxia, ne cito ad aliud transeat. Romani contra faciebant, 

 coinl)iirentes cadavera, ut statim anima in gcneralitateni, id est, in suam 

 natiiram rediret." The latter assertion is as erroneous as the former : 

 the Romans did not always burn their dead in early times, as Pliny 

 (vii. 54.) tells us ; Sylla having ordered his body to be burnt that the 

 limbs might not be scattered about and insulted, as those of Marius 

 were. It was, however, done sometimes in the early as well as the later 

 periods of their history, being mentioned in the laws of Nunia; but 

 not universally. 



:j: Hide supra, p. 440. ci scq.; and Vol. I. (2d Scries) p. 74. and 31G. 



$ Herodot. iii. 16. 



