ruder times.

JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD.--Death was a great equalizer among the Egyptians.
King and peasant alike must stand before the judgment-seat of Osiris and
his forty-two assessors.

This judgment of the soul in the other world was prefigured by a peculiar
ordeal to which the body was subjected here. Between each chief city and
the burial-place on the western edge of the valley was a sacred lake,
across which the body was borne in a barge. But, before admittance to the
boat, it must pass the ordeal called "the judgment of the dead." This was
a trial before a tribunal of forty-two judges, assembled upon the shore of
the lake. Any person could bring accusations against the deceased, false
charges being guarded against by the most dreadful penalties. If it
appeared that the life of the deceased had been evil, passage to the boat
was denied; and the body was either carried home in dishonor, or, in case
of the poor who could not afford to care for the mummy, was interred on
the shores of the lake. Many mummies of those refused admission to the
tombs of their fathers have been dug up along these "Stygian banks."

[Illustration: JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD: above, an ape-assessor scourges an
evil soul, that has been changed into an unclean animal.]

But this ordeal of the body was only a faint symbol of the dread tribunal
of Osiris before which the soul must appear in the lower world. In one
scale of a balance was placed the heart of the deceased; in the other
scale, an image of Justice, or Truth. The soul stands by watching the
result, and, as the beam inclines, is either welcomed to the companionship
of the good Osiris, or consigned to oblivion in the jaws of a frightful
hippopotamus-headed monster, "the devourer of evil souls." This