obtained, and reflections on the uncertainty of human life--the whole
forming the melancholy dirge which each generation intoned over its
predecessor, while waiting itself for the same office to be said over it
in its turn.

The bearers of offerings, friends, and slaves passed over on hired
barges, whose cabins, covered externally with embroidered stuffs of
several colours, or with _applique_ leather, looked like the pedestals
of a monument: crammed together on the boats, they stood upright with
their faces turned towards the funeral bark. The latter was supposed to
represent the Noshemît, the mysterious skiff of Abydos, which had been
used in the obsequies of Osiris of yore.

[Illustration: 016.jpg THE BOATS CONTAINING THE FRIENDS AND THE FUNERARY
FURNITURE]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from paintings on the tomb of
Nofirhotpû at Thebes.

It was elegant, light, and slender in shape, and ornamented at bow and
stern with a lotus-flower of metal, which bent back its head gracefully,
as if bowed down by its own weight. A temple-shaped shrine stood in
the middle of the boat, adorned with bouquets of flowers and with
green palm-branches. The female members of the family of the deceased,
crouched beside the shrine, poured forth lamentations, while two
priestesses, representing respectively Isis and Nephthys, took up
positions behind to protect the body. The boat containing the female
mourners having taken the funeral barge in tow, the entire flotilla
pushed out into the stream. This was the solemn moment of the
ceremony--the moment in which the deceased, torn away from his earthly