Akkrah and Adampe, Gold Coast ', Africa. 123 



Pawns, or other individuals who die heavily in debt, are denied the 

 rights of sepulture ; and unless some previous arrangement has been 

 made with the creditor, are exposed on an elevated platform on the 

 outskirts of the town, enshrouded by mats or enclosed in boxes, since 

 the interment of the corpse would render his family liable for the 

 payment of those bonds which the deceased had contracted when 

 living. A similar interdict is said to exist in Kumasse and other 

 Ashante towns. 



It is a somewhat singular fact, that among the ancient Egyptians 

 an edict almost identical constituted one of the fundamental clauses 

 promulgated in their judicial code for the regulation of commercial 

 affairs. Herodotus asserts, that it was first enacted by Asychis, a 

 king who merited the eulogium of being an illustrious benefactor to 

 his subjects. The historian remarks that, in his reign " when com- 

 merce was checked and injured from the extreme want of money, an 

 ordinance passed, that any one might borrow money, giving the body 

 of his father as a pledge. By this law the sepulchre of the debtor 

 became in the power of the creditor ; for if the debt was not dis- 

 charged, he would neither be buried with his family nor in any other 

 vault, nor was he suffered to inter one of his descendants." * 



Associated with other peculiar traits of much greater importance 

 in former periods than at present, must be mentioned the strange 

 decree, which, grounded on the faith of their primitive traditions, 

 and the superstitious dread of witchcraft, compels the exhumation 

 of the bodies of those people who have been suspected of being too 

 intimately concerned with the supernatural influences during their 

 lifetime. Natives who have been prematurely cut off, either from 

 the inroads of some occasional epidemic, or the ordinary maladies 

 of the season, are frequently supposed to become endowed with the 

 potent prerogative of generating disease and destroying life ; hence 

 it is not an uncommon occurrence, when two or three members of 

 the same family die in succession, to attribute their departure to the 

 agency of the first sufferer or sufferers, the corpses of which, after 

 satisfactory evidence has been adduced, are summarily removed 

 from their houses within the sanctuary of which they had been in- 

 terred, are ignominiously burned on the outskirts of the town, and 

 their ashes scattered to the winds, amid the mingled groans and 

 execrations of the populace. It matters not how innocent the un- 

 fortunate persons might have been, nor yet how long they may have 

 slept in the calm tranquillity of the grave. The voice of public opinion 

 is unanimous ; they are branded with the stigma of posthumous 

 murderers, and the violation of those hallowed repositories in which 

 they rest is imperiously demanded, and the destruction of their frail 



* Lib. 2, c. 136. 



