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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



haps love, represented by the mummifica- 

 tion and clothing of these hundreds of 

 thousands of bodies, more than are con- 

 tained in any human cemetery on the 

 planet! That the overseer of the work 

 thought of this as a religious task and 

 had expected the very best care to be 

 taken of these holy bones by his subordi- 

 nates is proved from the fact that even 

 scattered fragments of bodies were gath- 

 ered up and mummified when the entire 

 body could not be obtained. 



That all these sacred beings were killed 

 religiously and with saciificial awe must 

 be considered practically certain. To the 

 ancient Egyptian to kill a sacred animal 

 was not only murder, but sacrilege, ex- 

 cept as it was put to death sacramentally. 

 To care for a sick animal was as much 

 a duty as to care for sick relatives. A 

 hieroglyphic text from the Old Kingdom 

 makes the dead man declare at the judg- 

 ment : "I gave bread to the hungry, water 

 to the thirsty, and clothing to the naked. 

 I gave food to the ibis, the hawk, and the 

 jackal." 



Every preparation had been made to 

 prepare this worthily as a ''House of 

 Eternity." The digging of the sepulcher 

 was well done, and in the walls one could 

 see the niches where the lamps of the 

 hierophants must have stood when the 

 bodies were carried into the tomb and 

 the last rites of burial pronounced. What 

 were those rites of burial? No one liv- 

 ing can tell. We here touch the most 

 mysterious fact of the old Egyptian re- 

 ligion, as in the ibis cemetery, the rever- 

 ence for animals as the incarnation of 

 the life of deity. 



WHY the: jackal WAS SACRED 



Why was the jackal so revered and 

 why was his burial place selected in the 

 holy city of Abydos ? The answer is ex- 

 actly the same as in the case of the ibis. 



The jackal was sacred to Anubis, who, 

 in the myth of Osiris, was one of the 

 chief deities concerned in winning im- 

 mortality for the human race. Anubis 

 was the friend of the righteous dead and 

 guided the soul across the trackless desert 

 to the fields of Aalu. According to Egyp- 

 tian theology, the judgment came imme- 

 diately after death and was held in the 



Hall of Maat, where 42 judges listened 

 to the plea of the deceased that he had 

 been sinless, and where the heart of the 

 dead man was weighed in the scales 

 against the ostrich feather — symbol of 

 Maat — goddess of truth. 



This weighing was conducted under 

 the eye of Thoth, scribe of the gods, and 

 of Anubis, the ''Opener of the Ways," 

 who stands close to the balance ready to 

 start quickly on his journey with the 

 justified dead, while a little further oflf 

 crouches the monster Ament, "Devourer," 

 waiting for his prey if the decision is 

 adverse. 



The reason why the jackal was chosen 

 as symbol or incarnation of Anubis is 

 perfectly plain. On each side Egypt is 

 inclosed by mountains, beyond which lie 

 limitless deserts. Kings may somccimes 

 travel by the sun boat to the next world, 

 but most of human kind must take their 

 route over the Sahara if they ever reach 

 this happy land of the west. The desert 

 was always thought of as the land of 

 Set — rocky, unproductive, hostile, a land 

 of ghosts — dead souls that have lost their 

 way. 



A PICTURE O^ THE DESERT 



One day I climbed to the top of the 

 gehel and started out over the Sahara 

 toward the sunset to find out for myself 

 what this region was that was regarded 

 by the ancient Egyptians as the Shadow 

 of Death. Before night I had become 

 satisfied that the Egyptian symbolism 

 could not be improved ; dreary, limitless, 

 with no hint of vegetation or life of any 

 kind, no blade of grass, no bird or insect 

 or beast to be seen, with its imitation 

 wadys and deceptive mirages and endless 

 stretches of bare sand curled into wild 

 shapes ; it looked like a demon land, and 

 I did not wonder that the authorized ver- 

 sion of the Old Testament translates 

 "jackal," the one inhabitant of this realm 

 of death, by "dragon." This is, pecu- 

 liarly, the animal of the desert. 



Practically every soul must pass 

 through this wilderness before it can 

 reach the blessed oasis, the kingdom of 

 Osiris. The jackal's omniscience as to 

 where any dead body is hidden, his wails 

 in the night as if for lost souls, his cer- 



