eventing disgrace or procuring honour to a
name, when nothing but a name remains.

[Footnote 92: If the Colchians, according to the assertion of Herodotus,
Euter. 104, are to be considered as derived from the Egyptians, which
some circumstances of resemblance render probable, it seems not
irrational to imagine, that they had acquired from that people an
abhorrence to the thought of becoming food for worms. This, Herodotus
says, in Thal. 16. was the reason why they (the Egyptians) embalmed the
bodies of the dead; for which the practice adopted by the Colchians, of
wrapping them in hides of oxen for the purpose of preservation, was
judged an adequate substitute. But though this be admitted as
satisfactory with respect to the origin of the usage, it affords no
explanation as to the difference observable in the treatment of the
sexes after death, which must be looked for in some other circumstance,
common to these two people, or peculiar to one, of them. It can scarcely
be imputed to the different estimation in which the sexes were held
whilst living; for if any thing, at least in the opinion of Diodorus
Siculus, the women were in higher authority in Egypt than the men, in so
far as civil and political rights were concerned. On the other hand, it
is certain from Herodotus, that men alone could officiate in the service
of their gods, whether male or female, and that there were no
priestesses in Egypt. No reason can be discovered for this exclusion. It
is merely credible, that the Egyptians, though ascribing great
excellence to the female sex in various particulars, nevertheless judged
them to be destitute of that principle which constituted the essence of
the gods; and therefore unfit for their society. Possibly they might in
consequence imagine them to be incapable of immortality and
transmigration, a belief which they so firmly maintained, as to be led
to specify the various changes which the soul underwent for the space of
three thousand years, when it re-assumed the human body. Now, if the
Colchians credited this doctrine of the immortality and transmigration
of the soul, and at the same time depreciated for any reasons whatever
the dignity of women, one may easily conceive why they should think of
a difference in the mode of disposing of male and female corpses. After
all, however, such reasoning as this is very far from satisfactory;
nevertheless, in the mind of the judicious reader, accustomed to
contemplate the minut