with round pediment.]--to be erected in it, yet further particulars would
be given; a priest of the temple of Seti was charged to write them, and
to draw up a catalogue of the rich offerings of the survivors. The last
could be done later, when, after the division of the property, the amount
of the fortune he had left could be ascertained. The mere mummifying of
the body with the finest oils and essences, cloths, amulets, and cases,
would cost a talent of silver, without the stone sarcophagus.

The widow wore a long mourning robe, her forehead was lightly daubed with
Nile-mud, and in the midst of her chaffering with the functionaries of
the embalming-house, whose prices she complained of as enormous and
rapacious, from time to time she broke out into a loud wail of grief--
as the occasion demanded.

More modest citizens finished their commissions sooner, though it was not
unusual for the income of a whole year to be sacrificed for the embalming
of the head of a household--the father or the mother of a family. The
mummifying of the poor was cheap, and that of the poorest had to be
provided by the kolchytes as a tribute to the king, to whom also they
were obliged to pay a tax in linen from their looms.

This place of business was carefully separated from the rest of the
establishment, which none but those who were engaged in the processes
carried on there were on any account permitted to enter. The kolchytes
formed a closely-limited guild at the head of which stood a certain
number of priests, and from among them the masters of the many thousand
members were chosen. This guild was highly respected, even the
taricheutes, who were entrusted with the actual work of embalming, could
venture to mix with the other citizens, although in Thebes itself people
always avoided them with a certain horror; only the paraschites, whose