By using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their sa of life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger, while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond in the northern sky, called the "pond of the Sa."[*] Divine bodies, continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their vigour far beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts. Age, instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them into precious metals. Their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to gold; their hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great chiefs, was turned into lapis-lazuli.[**]

This transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether do away with the ravages of time. Decrepitude was no less irremediable with them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the sun had grown old "his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth, his spittle dropped upon the ground."

None of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the tomb.[*]

The ancients long refused to believe that death was natural and inevitable. They thought that life, once began, might go on indefinitely: if no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of itself? And so men did not die in Egypt; they were assassinated. The murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him. But often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. He was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with irresistible violence—illness being a struggle between the one possessed and the power which possessed him. As soon as the former succumbed he was carried away from his own people, and his place knew him no more. But had all ended for him with the moment in which he had ceased to breathe? As to the body, no one was ignorant of its natural fate. It quickly fell to decay, and a few years sufficed to reduce it to a skeleton. And as for the skeleton, in the lapse of centuries that too was disintegrated and became a mere train of dust, to be blown away by the first breath of wind. The soul might have a longer career and fuller fortunes, but these were believed to be dependent upon those of the body, and commensurate with them. Every advance made in the process of decomposition robbed the soul of some part of itself; its consciousness gradually faded until nothing was left but a vague and hollow form that vanished altogether when the corpse had entirely disappeared. Erom an early date the Egyptians had endeavoured to arrest this gradual destruction of the human organism, and their first effort to this end naturally was directed towards the preservation of the body, since without it the existence of the soul could not be ensured. It was imperative that during that last sleep, which for them was fraught with such terrors, the flesh should neither become decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be free from offensive odour and secure from predatory worms.

They set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it. The oldest burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades only. When one of them died, his son, or his nearest relative, carefully washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes which were destined to overpower, at least temporarily, the odour of death.[*]

Having taken these precautions, they placed the body in the grave, sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin. The dead man was placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the east, in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of leather or a fleece, in the position of a child in the foetal state. The knees were sharply bent at an angle of 45° with the thighs, while the latter were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as almost to touch the elbows. The hands are sometimes extended in front of the face, sometimes the arms are folded and the hands joined on the breast or neck. In some instances the legs are bent upward in such a fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk. The deceased could only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the operation. The dryness of the ground selected for these burial-places retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally destroyed. Seeing decay could not be prevented, it was determined to accelerate the process, by taking the flesh from the bones before interment. The bodies thus treated are often incomplete; the head is missing, or is detached from the neck and laid in another part of the pit, or, on the other hand, the body is not there, and the head only is found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones, or a layer of cut flints. The forearms and the hands were subjected to the same treatment as the head. In many cases no trace of them appears, in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered about haphazard. Other mutilations are frequently met with; the ribs are divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground or enclosed together in an earthenware chest.

These precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the Egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. The human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor continuity. It was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no connecting links. This drawback, it is true, was remedied by the artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies. The bones were laid in their natural order; those of the feet at the bottom, then those of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself. But the superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally incomplete. When they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living. Having taken this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could really enjoy life so long as one half only of the body remained, and the other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to discover the means of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the body. It had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted away,[*] and the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance, while its integrity ensured that of the soul.

An attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative action of the sand, and, without mutilating the body, to secure at will that incorruptibility without which the persistence of the soul was but a useless prolongation of the death-agony. It was the god Anubis—the jackal lord of sepulture—who was supposed to have made this discovery. He cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most rapidly decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected it first of all with the hide of a beast, and over this laid thick layers of linen. The victory the god had thus gained over corruption was, however, far from being a complete one. The bath in which the dead man was immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body: the chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the period of saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously diminished.

When any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn: these shrivelled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened skin spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer's salts, were not the man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been. As nevertheless he was secure against immediate destruction, the Egyptians described him as furnished with his shape; henceforth he had been purged of all that was evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security whatever awaited him in the future. The art of Anubis, transmitted to the embalmers and employed by them from generation to generation, had, by almost eliminating the corruptible part of the body without destroying its outward appearance, arrested decay, if not for ever, at least for an unlimited period of time. If there were hills at hand, thither the mummied dead were still borne, partly from custom, partly because the dryness of the air and of the soil offered them a further chance of preservation. In districts of the Delta where the hills were so distant as to make it very costly to reach them, advantage was taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above the marshes, and there a cemetery was founded. Where this resource failed, the mummy was fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after being placed within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough, hermetically fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of any moisture. Reassured on this point, the soul followed the body to the tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines of the visible and invisible worlds.

Here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which pertained to it "upon the earth:" as it had been a "double" before death, so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions of animal life after its own fashion. It moved, went, came, spoke, breathed, accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were mechanically, rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than from any rational desire for immortality. Unceasing regret for the bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful and inert existence. "O my brother, withhold not thyself from drinking and from eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy heart, for what are the years of a man upon earth? The West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein its inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy-forms, never more waking to see their brethren; never more to recognize their fathers or their mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. Since I came into this funereal valley I know not where nor what I am. Give me to drink of running water!... Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow." By day the double remained concealed within the tomb. If it went forth by night, it was from no capricious or sentimental desire to revisit the spots where it had led a happier life. Its organs needed nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it possessed nothing "but hunger for food, thirst for drink."[*] Want and misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living. It prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground—broken meats which had been left or forgotten, house and stable refuse—and, should these meagre resources fail, even the most revolting dung and excrement.[**]

This ravenous sceptre had not the dim and misty form, the long shroud of floating draperies of our modern phantoms, but a precise and definite shape, naked, or clothed in the garments which it had worn while yet upon earth, and emitting a pale light, to which it owed the name of Luminous—Khû, Khûû.[*] The double did not allow its family to forget it, but used all the means at its disposal to remind them of its existence. It entered their houses and their bodies, terrified them waking and sleeping by its sudden apparitions, struck them down with disease or madness,[**] and would even suck their blood like the modern vampire.

One effectual means there was, and one only, of escaping or preventing these visitations, and this lay in taking to the tomb all the various provisions of which the double stood in need, and for which it visited their dwellings. Funerary sacrifices and the regular cultus of the dead originated in the need experienced for making provision for the sustenance of the manes after having secured their lasting existence by the mummification of their bodies.[*]

Gazelles and oxen were brought and sacrificed at the door of the tomb chapel; the haunches, heart, and breast of each victim being presented and heaped together upon the ground, that there the dead might find them when they began to be hungry. Vessels of beer or wine, great jars of fresh water, purified with natron, or perfumed, were brought to them that they might drink their fill at pleasure, and by such voluntary tribute men bought their good will, as in daily life they bought that of some neighbour too powerful to be opposed.

The gods were spared none of the anguish and none of the perils which death so plentifully bestows upon men. Their bodies suffered change and gradually perished until nothing was left of them. Their souls, like human souls, were only the representatives of their bodies, and gradually became extinct if means of arresting the natural tendency to decay were not found in time. Thus, the same necessity that forced men to seek the kind of sepulture which gave the longest term of existence to their souls, compelled the gods to the same course. At first, they were buried in the hills, and one of their oldest titles describes them as those "who are upon the sand,"[*] safe from putrefaction; afterwards, when the art of embalming had been discovered, the gods received the benefit of the new invention and were mummified.

Each nome possessed the mummy and the tomb of its dead god: at Thinis there was the mummy and the tomb of Anhuri, the mummy of Osiris at Mendes, the mummy of Tûmû at Heliopolis.[*] In some of the nomes the gods did not change their names in altering the mode of their existence: the deceased Osiris remained Osiris; Nit and Hâthor when dead were still Nît and Hâthor, at Saïs and at Denderah. But Phtah of Memphis became Sokaris by dying; Uapûaîtû, the jackal of Siût, was changed into Anubis;[**] and when his disk had disappeared at evening, Anhûri, the sunlit sky of Thinis, was Khontamentît, Lord of the West, until the following day.

That bliss which we dream of enjoying in the world to come was not granted to the gods any more than to men. Their bodies were nothing but inert larvae, "with unmoving heart,"[*] weak and shrivelled limbs, unable to stand upright were it not that the bandages in which they were swathed stiffened them into one rigid block. Their hands and heads alone were free, and were of the green or black shades of putrid flesh.

Their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted the light. All sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from which they suffered, and gods who were noted for their compassionate kindness when alive, became pitiless and ferocious tyrants in the tomb. When once men were bidden to the presence of Sokaris, Khontamentîfc, or even of Osiris, "mortals come terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to look him in the face either among gods or men; for him the great are as the small. He spareth not those who love him; he beareth away the child from its mother, and the old man who walketh on his way; full of fear, all creatures make supplication before him, but he turneth not his face towards them." Only by the unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding him as though he were a simple human double, could living or dead escape the consequences of his furious temper. The living paid him his dues in pomps and solemn sacrifices, repeated from year to year at regular intervals; but the dead bought more dearly the protection which he deigned to extend to them. He did not allow them to receive directly the prayers, sepulchral meals, or offerings of kindred on feast-days; all that was addressed to them must first pass through his hands. When their friends wished to send them wine, water, bread, meat, vegetables, and fruits, he insisted that these should first be offered and formally presented to himself; then he was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a double, whose name and parentage were pointed out to him. He took possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his bounty gave the remainder to its destined recipient. Thus death made no change in the relative positions of the feudal god and his worshippers. The worshipper who called himself the amakhû of the god during life was the subject and vassal of his mummied god even in the tomb;[*] and the god who, while living, reigned over the living, after his death continued to reign over the dead.

He dwelt in the city near the prince and in the midst of his subjects: Râ living in Heliopolis along with the prince of Heliopolis; Haroêris in Edfû together with the prince of Edfû; Nît in Saïs with the prince of Sais. Although none of the primitive temples have come down to us, the name given to them in the language of the time, shows what they originally were. A temple was considered as the feudal mansion—hâît,—the house—pirû, pi,—of the god, better cared for, and more respected than the houses of men, but not otherwise differing from them. It was built on a site slightly raised above the level of the plain, so as to be safe from the inundation, and where there was no natural mound, the want was supplied by raising a rectangular platform of earth. A layer of sand spread uniformly on the sub-soil provided against settlements or infiltration, and formed a bed for the foundations of the building.[*]

This was first of all a single room, circumscribed, gloomy, covered in by a slightly vaulted roof, and having no opening but the doorway, which was framed by two tall masts, whence floated streamers to attract from afar the notice of worshippers; in front of its façade [*] was a court, fenced in with palisading.

Within the temple were pieces of matting, low tables of stone, wood, or metal, a few utensils for cooking the offerings, a few vessels for containing the blood, oil, wine, and water with which the god was every day regaled. As provisions for sacrifice increased, the number of chambers increased with them, and rooms for flowers, perfumes, stuffs, precious vessels, and food were grouped around the primitive abode; until that which had once constituted the whole temple became no more than its sanctuary. There the god dwelt, not only in spirit but in body,[*] and the fact that it was incumbent upon him to live in several cities did not prevent his being present in all of them at once. He could divide his double, imparting it to as many separate bodies as he pleased, and these bodies might be human or animal, natural objects or things manufactured—such as statues of stone, metal, or wood.[**] Several of the gods were incarnate in rams: Osiris at Mendes, Harshafitû at Heracleopolis, Khnûmû at Elephantine. Living rams were kept in their temples, and allowed to gratify any fancy that came into their animal brains. Other gods entered into bulls: Râ at Heliopolis, and, subsequently, Phtah at Memphis, Minû at Thebes, and Montû at Hermonthis. They indicated beforehand by certain marks such beasts as they intended to animate by. their doubles, and he who had learnt to recognize these signs was at no loss to find a living god when the time came for seeking one and presenting it to the adoration of worshippers in the temple.[***]

And if the statues had not the same outward appearance of actual life as the animals, they none the less concealed beneath their rigid exteriors an intense energy of life which betrayed itself on occasion by gestures or by words. They thus indicated, in language which their servants could understand, the will of the gods, or their opinion on the events of the day; they answered questions put to them in accordance with prescribed forms, and sometimes they even foretold the future.

Each temple held a fairly large number of statues representing so many embodiments of the local divinity and of the members of his triad. These latter shared, albeit in a lesser degree, all the honours and all the prerogatives of the master; they accepted sacrifices, answered prayers, and, if needful, they prophesied. They occupied either the sanctuary itself, or one of the halls built about the principal sanctuary, or one of the isolated chapels which belonged to them, subject to the suzerainty of the feudal god. The god has his divine court to help him in the administration of his dominions, just as a prince is aided by his ministers in the government of his realm.

This State religion, so complex both in principle and in its outward manifestations, was nevertheless inadequate to express the exuberant piety of the populace. There were casual divinities in every nome whom the people did not love any the less because of their inofficial character; such as an exceptionally high palm tree in the midst of the desert, a rock of curious outline, a spring trickling drop by drop from the mountain to which hunters came to slake their thirst in the hottest hours of the day, or a great serpent believed to be immortal, which haunted a field, a grove of trees, a grotto, or a mountain ravine.[*]

The peasants of the district brought it bread, cakes, fruits, and thought that they could call down the blessing of heaven upon their fields by gorging the snake with offerings. Everywhere on the confines of cultivated ground, and even at some distance from the valley, are fine single sycamores, flourishing as though by miracle amid the sand.

Their fresh greenness is in sharp contrast with the surrounding fawn-coloured landscape, and their thick foliage defies the midday sun even in summer. But, on examining the ground in which they grow, we soon find that they drink from water which has infiltrated from the Nile, and whose existence is in nowise betrayed upon the surface of the soil. They stand as it were with their feet in the river, though no one about them suspects it. Egyptians of all ranks counted them divine and habitually worshipped them,[**] making them offerings of figs, grapes, cucumbers, vegetables, and water in porous jars daily replenished by good and charitable people.

Passers-by drank of the water, and requited the unexpected benefit with a short prayer. There were several such trees in the Memphite nome, and in the Letopolite nome from Dashûr to Gîzeh, inhabited, as every one knew, by detached doubles of Nûît and Hâthor. These combined districts were known as the "Land of the Sycamore," a name afterwards extended to the city of Memphis; and their sacred trees are worshipped at the present day both by Mussulman and Christian fellahîn.[*]

The most famous among them all, the Sycamore of the South—nûhît rîsit—was regarded as the living body of Hâthor on earth. Side by side with its human gods and prophetic statues, each nome proudly advanced one or more sacred animals, one or more magic trees. Each family, and almost every individual, also possessed gods and fetishes, which had been pointed out for their worship by some fortuitous meeting with an animal or an object; by a dream, or by sudden intuition. They had a place in some corner of the house, or a niche in its walls; lamps were continually kept burning before them, and small daily offerings were made to them, over and above what fell to their share on solemn feast-days. In return, they became the protectors of the household, its guardians and its counsellors. Appeal was made to them in every exigency of daily life, and their decisions were no less scrupulously carried out by their little circle of worshippers, than was the will of the feudal god by the inhabitants of his principality.

The prince was the great high priest. The whole religion of the nome rested upon him, and originally he himself performed its ceremonies. Of these, the chief was sacrifice,—that is to say, a banquet which it was his duty to prepare and lay before the god with his own hands. He went out into the fields to lasso the half-wild bull; bound it, cut its throat, skinned it, burnt part of the carcase in front of his idol and distributed the rest among his assistants, together with plenty of cakes, fruits, vegetables, and wine.[*] On the occasion, the god was present both in body and double, suffering himself to be clothed and perfumed, eating and drinking of the best that was set on the table before him, and putting aside some of the provisions for future use. This was the time to prefer requests to him, while he was gladdened and disposed to benevolence by good cheer. He was not without suspicion as to the reason why he was so feasted, but he had laid down his conditions beforehand, and if they were faithfully observed he willingly yielded to the means of seduction brought to bear upon him. Moreover, he himself had arranged the ceremonial in a kind of contract formerly made with his worshippers and gradually perfected from age to age by the piety of new generations.[**] Above all things, he insisted on physical cleanliness. The officiating priest must carefully wash—ûâbû—his face, mouth, hands, and body; and so necessary was this preliminary purification considered, that from it the professional priest derived his name of ûîbû, the washed, the clean.[***]

His costume was the archaic dress, modified according to circumstances. During certain services, or at certain points in the sacrifices, it was incumbent upon him to wear sandals, the panther-skin over his shoulder, and the thick lock of hair falling over his right ear; at other times he must gird himself with the loin-cloth having a jackal's tail, and take the shoes from off his feet before proceeding with his office, or attach a false beard to his chin. The species, hair, and age of the victim, the way in which it was to be brought and bound, the manner and details of its slaughter, the order to be followed in opening its body and cutting it up, were all minutely and unchangeably decreed. And these were but the least of the divine exactions, and those most easily satisfied. The formulas accompanying each act of the sacrificial priest contained a certain number of words whose due sequence and harmonies might not suffer the slightest modification whatever, even from the god himself, under penalty of losing their efficacy.[*]