first to discover that the soul is immortal, their conception of it
being that it is an emanation from or a particle of the universal soul,
which in a less degree animates all animals and plants, and even
inorganic things. Their dogma that there had been divine incarnations
obliged them to assert that there had been a fall of man, this seeming
to be necessary to obtain a logical argument in justification of
prodigies so great. For the relief of the guilty soul, they prescribed
in this life fasts and penances, and in the future a transmigration
through animals for purification. At death, the merits of the soul were
ascertained by a formal trial before Osiris in the shadowy region of
Amenti--the under world--in presence of the four genii of that realm,
and of forty-two assessors. To this judgment the shade was conducted by
Horus, who carried him past Cerberus, a hippopotamus, the gaunt guardian
of the gate. He stood by in silence while Anubis weighed his heart in
the scales of justice. If his good works preponderated, he was dismissed
to the fields of Aahlu--the Elysian Fields; if his evil, he was
condemned to transmigration.

[Sidenote: The trial of the dead.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the Greek Hades.]

But that this doctrine of a judgment in another world might not decline
into an idle legend, it was enforced by a preparatory trial in this--a
trial of fearful and living import. From the sovereign to the meanest
subject, every man underwent a sepulchral inquisition. As soon as any
one died, his body was sent to the embalmers, who kept it forty days,
and for thirty-two in addition the family mourned, the mummy, in its
coffin, was placed erect in an inner chamber of the house. Notice was
then sent to the forty-two assessors of the district; and on an
appointed day, the corpse was carried to the sacred lake, of which every
nome, and, indeed, every large town, had one toward the west. Arrived on
its shore, the trial commenced; any person might bring charges against
the deceased, or speak in his behalf; but woe to the false accuser. The
assessors then passed sentence according to the evidence before them: if
they found an evil life, sepulture was denied, and, in the midst of
social disgrace, the friends bore back the mummy to their home, to be
redeemed by their own good works in future years; or, if too poor to
give it a place of refuge, it was buried on the margin of the lake, the
culprit ghost waiting and wandering for a hun