MOUNDS OF RECENT ORIGIN. 109 



military edge with it, and his great employment is necessarily war and the chase, 

 the weapons of both would naturally be deposited with the dead." We have a 

 striking passage of Scripture, which shows the custom to have been as general as 

 the spirit of ambition or the profession of arms : " They shall not lie down with 

 the mighty which are gone down to hell [the grave] with their weapons of war ; 

 and they have laid their swords under their heads." Josephus tells us, that in 

 David's sepulchre was deposited such a quantity of treasure, that Hyrcanus, the 

 Maccabean, took three thousand talents out of it, about 1300 years after David's 

 death, to get rid of Antiochus, then besieging Jerusalem. 



Uniformity in the rites and ceremonies attending burial must not, however, be 

 regarded as necessarily implying connections or relations between the nations 

 exhibiting them ; for most, if not all of those which may be esteemed of importance, 

 had their origin in those primitive conceptions and notions which are inherent in 

 man, and are in nowise derivative. In the universal recognition of a future exist- 

 ence, may be traced the origin of the immolations and sacrifices made at the tombs 

 or on the pyres of the dead : the wife and the faithful servant sought to accompany 

 their lord in his future life ; and a numerous retinue was slain at the tomb of the 

 Scythian King and the Peruvian Inca, that they might appear in a future state with 

 a dignity and pomp proportionate to their earthly greatness. The Mexican slew 

 the techichi at the grave of the dead, that his soul might have a companion in its 

 journey along the dreary, terror-infested pathway, which, according to his super- 

 stitions, intervened between earth and the " blessed mansions of the sun." So, 

 too, the faithful dog of the Indian hunter was placed beside him in the grave, that 

 in the bUssful " hunting-grounds of the West" he might " bear him company." The 

 warlike Scandinavian had his horse sacrificed on his funeral pyre, and his weapons 

 buried with him, so that, full armed and mounted, he might, with becoming state, 

 approach the halls of Odin. — (Mallet, Chap. XII.) In the almost universal behef 

 that the soul of the dead, for a longer or shorter period, lingered around the 

 ashes from which it was separated, we may discover the reason why food and 

 oflierings were deposited at the grave ; why it was carefully preserved ; and why, 

 at stated intervals, the surviving relatives of the deceased decked it with flowers 

 and performed games around it. In some of these ceremonies it was believed the 

 departed spirit silently participated, and with all it was supposed to be pleased and 

 gratified. 



