is an urn, containing the actions of the life of Nesimandu, in the other, by way of weight, the image of Smé, the goddess of truth. The scale on which lies the urn, is attended by Horus, whose symbolical name is engraved over his head. The other, which contains the image of the goddess, is watched over by Anubis. Above his head there is an inscription, of which I cannot entirely make out the meaning; but from what I can make out, it appears to be "a declaration by Anubis, that these are the proofs of the life and actions of Nesimandu, deceased."

In front of the balance we have the god Thoth, holding a tablet in his left hand, on which he notes down with a reed which he has in his right, the result of the weighing of the life and actions of Nesimandu, approving of the result, and recommending that he might be introduced to Osiris.

The middle compartment represents two rows, containing forty-two figures, in two distinct lines of twenty-one each. They are the emblematical figures of the forty-two judges, who upon earth tried the merits and the demerits of

every dead person,

to see whether he deserved the distinction of a burial. This trial, which even kings were obliged to undergo, formed the most remarkable feature in the Egyptian religious code, and, no doubt, arose from the belief, that in the next world, the same ceremony took place, before the soul of the dead was allowed to be presented to Osiris, in order that he might, according to the life he had led, be

sent to the appropriated region, of greater or less happiness or misery.

To signify that the judges were perfectly impartial, and that the deceased was tried according to the strictest rules of justice, the judges were represented under the human form, with the heads of the different animals which were the symbolical characters of the several gods or goddesses; or, in other and more appropriate expressions, the representation of the several attributes and emanations of the great Demiurgos.

To render the whole picture more striking, it seems as if the sentence of the forty-two judges was carried down to the goddess Smé by her attendant, while she received the petition of Nesimandu at the time that the god Thoth was registering, on the tablets of fate, the result of the weighing, which Horus and Anubis had made of the whole of his life, against the image of the goddess of Truth.

The whole of this representation seems, no doubt, to have been executed in honour of Nesimandu, as a proof of his having been admitted to the funeral honours which the Egyptians granted to all persons who had led a virtuous life. The MS. to which this curious drawing is attached, is now in the Vatican library; and I have no doubt, that if it were made out, most of its contents would turn out to be the recital of the actions of Nesimandu, or, at least, something concerning him. I am led to this conclusion by seeing over his head, engraved in hieroglyphical characters, not only his

name, but also that of his father Nuabendi; a circumstance which, according to my opinion, evidently proves, that he is the hero of the representation, the object of which is to praise him.

Perhaps it may be asked, whether any monument or inscription exists, in which the scale is observed to preponderate on the opposite side, that is, to exhibit an instance of a bad life in the deceased; and if so, what were the marks added to such an exhibition, to shew the disapprobation of society?

To the first of these questions I answer, that monuments of this sort are very seldom to be met with, though I have no doubt that they were not uncommon. It would be impossible to conceive that the whole of the Egyptian nation was so moral and correct, as not occasionally to exhibit individuals whose immoral conduct deserved reprobation and punishment. These, we know, were deprived of religious burials, and their bodies cast into pits, or disposed of in a manner different from that which was generally practised.

Now as the whole of this ceremony was intended to inculcate the necessity of a virtuous life, by the certainty of a future existence of reward or punishment, we have a right to suppose, that, for the sake of example, exhibitions of this sort must have existed, by which the people might see that the denial of burial in this world was followed up by some punishment in the Amenti. Contrary to our expectation, however, it seems that monuments of

this sort are very rare; for M. Champollion told Captain Sabine, from whom I received the information, that, among the great numbers of pictures and MSS. he had examined, he had seen only one monument in which the urn, containing the soul or actions of the deceased, could not balance the weight of the image of Smé. In consequence of this deficiency, on a flight of stairs which formed the communication between the Amenti and the world, the deceased was represented under the form of a dog, with his tail between his legs, running away from the god Anubis, who was pursuing and driving him back again into the world. This representation confirms the opinion, that the Egyptians admitted the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and believed that the souls of men, for particular crimes, were condemned to return to life under the shape of some animal, to atone for their past sins.

As no legend was attached to this extraordinary picture, M. Champollion could not ascertain either the name of the deceased, or the offence he had committed. From other circumstances, however, connected with this monument, he is of opinion that the deceased was so punished for the crime of high treason, a crime which, in every civilized country, has been, and very properly too, considered of the most heinous and profligate nature, destructive of the very foundation of society, and, therefore chastised, not only in this world, but in the next. To a certain extent, such seems to

be the doctrine of the law of England to this moment.

Upon the whole, it seems evident that the Egyptian Amenti has been the prototype and the origin of the Hades of the Greeks, and the Tartarus of the Latins. Orpheus, who had been initiated in all the secrets of the mysteries of Egypt, carried into Greece these mysteries, and the Greeks soon so altered the whole, as to render it no longer recognisable. Osiris became Pluto; Smé, Persephone; Oms, Cerberus; Thoth, Mercurius Psychopompos ; Horus, Apis, and Anubis the three infernal judges, Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamanthus. To conclude the whole, the symbolical heads of the different animals under which the forty-two judges were represented, being deprived of their primitive and symbolical meaning, were changed into real monsters, the Chimeras, the Harpies, the Gorgons, and other such unnatural and horrible things, with which they peopled their fantastic hell; and thus the Amenti of the Egyptians, as indeed the greatest part, if not the whole of their religion, became, in the hands of the Greeks and Romans a compound of fables and absurdities.

Such is the account I have to offer with regard to the leading points of the Egyptian Amenti. We must now pass on to consider another sort of characters, or signs, which may be called, as indeed they are, grammatical forms. They often occur in the different legends, and without a previous explanation their meaning is not easily understood.