of Osiris, the supreme judge of souls. It is situated in Amenti, the west. The god himself appears to the left of the picture. He is enthroned on a magnificent shrine, and wears a head-dress composed of the upper part of the diadem

called Sent, which denotes dominion in the upper region, that is, in heaven; it is adorned with two ostrich feathers, (the symbols of justice,) and with the disc of the sun, and

the horns of a goat, signifying light and

fertility. He has in his hands a scourge, and a sceptre bent at one end in the form of a crook, the symbol of dominion. This, as the accompanying legend informs us, is Osiris, , the very beneficent, the lord of life the great god, the eternal mediator ?, president of Amenti, and eternal king, king of many days

10. Immediately before the throne, and within the shrine, is a kind of stand, upon which is hung the skin of a panther: the meaning of this is unknown. An altar stands in front of the shrine laden with offerings, consisting of flowers, fruit, bread, and flesh, with wine and milk in vases; probably representing the acts of piety performed on behalf of the deceased by his surviving relatives. On a pedestal in the immediate vicinity of the throne a monster reposes, having the paws of a lion, the body of a female hippopotamus, and the head of a crocodile. Her name, the devourer of Amenti,"

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as well as her appearance, at

once point her out as another of the ministers of vengeance executing the judgments of the divinity before whom she crouches.

At the opposite extremity of the picture, to the right, is

a group of three persons. That in the centre is clothed in the ordinary manner of the Egyptians, and presented by one of his companions, a female wearing an ostrich feather in her hair, to the other, also a female, similarly ornamented, and having the sceptre of tranquillity and the symbol of life in her hands. This group represents the soul of the deceased introduced by the two Themeis (representing the two attributes they impersonate, truth and justice) to the bar of the judge of all things. It was their office to receive the souls of the deceased on their appearance before his tribunal. They were also the presidents of the forty-two avengers, who are represented on the upper part of the picture, seated in two rows, to both of which the deceased offers supplications. The heads of these judges vary considerably; some have the human form, others the heads of living creatures, such as the crocodile, snake, ram, hawk, ibis, jackal, hippopotamus, lion, and ape. We have seen that they are the ministers of vengeance, whose wrath is to be deprecated by the deceased. The names of all the forty-two, and the particular regions over which they preside, occur in the entire copies of this scene. In other copies, they are represented sitting before their presidents. In the the judge Osiris, these and other divinities, or genii, rigorously examined the conduct of the soul while incarnate upon earth. The motives thereof, most significantly symbolized by his heart, are placed in the huge balance of Amenti, which occupies the centre of the picture; and in the opposite scale appears the image of Thmei, or the ostrich feather that adorns her head-dress, (the symbol of justice or truth,) indicative of the inexorable nature of the scrutiny which is taking place. One of the ministers of Thoth, in

presence of

the form of a baboon, whose name is Hap, (sentence, judgment,) sits on the stand that supports the balance, and the instrument is attended by Horus the hawk-headed, the beloved son of Osiris and Isis, who steadies the scale in which the heart is placed, and at the same time closely observes the index of the balance. The opposite scale is trimmed by Anubis with the dog's head, the son of Osiris and Nephthys, who declares the result of the scrutiny to the ibis-headed Thoth, the divine wisdom. He stands with his writing tablet and pen immediately in front of Osiris, the supreme judge of this fearful assize; and, as clerk of the court, writes down the sentence in his presence. This sentence was full of joy to the good, and of woe to the wicked. They who by the faithful discharge of all their moral obligations as children, as parents, as masters or servants, as kings or subjects, and by the conscientious avoidance of vice under all its grosser forms, had been enabled to pass the ordeal, were permitted to pass through the hall of the Thmeis. Whence, embarking on the infernal Nile, they are privileged to behold once more the disc of the sun, a blessing for which the gods are very frequently supplicated on behalf of the deceased. With that luminary it would seem that they arose to heaven, and in his bark they navigated the celestial Nile, or primordial ether. At the fifth hour they were landed in the habitations of blessedness, where they rested from their labours. Here they reap the corn, and gather the fruits of paradise, under the eye and smile of the lord of joy in the heart, that is, the sun, who exhorts them thus:-"Take your sickles, reap your grain, carry it into your dwellings, that ye may be glad therewith, and present it as a pure offering unto God." There also they bathe in the pure river

M

of the water of life that flows past their habitation. Over them is inscribed, "They have found favour in the eyes of the great God; they inhabit the mansions of glory, where they enjoy the life of heaven; the bodies which they have abandoned shall repose for ever in their tombs, while they rejoice in the presence of the supreme God."

But a terrible fate impended over those who, being weighed in the balance of Amenti, were found wanting. In the first instance, their souls were driven back to earth again by ministers of vengeance in the form of baboons, to transmigrate into that animal to which their besetting sin had assimilated them. The glutton, driven from the tribunal with heavy blows, became a hog; the cruel man a wolf, etc.

But if, after three transmigrations, the soul still remained polluted, its hope perished for ever; and it was transported to the regions of darkness and eternal death, symbolized by the twelve hours of the night, and the lower hemisphere. God, under the symbol of the sun, is present here also; but as the avenger and tormentor he makes the darkness his pavilion; his disc is black; no ray of light issues from him to illume their cheerless abodes. His object in visiting them is to superintend and preside over the punishments endured by the wicked in the seventy-five zones into which the lower hemisphere was divided. Each zone has an attendant spirit attached to it, who is also the executioner. In one of the zones, the lost souls are bound to stakes, covered with wounds, which their executioners are still inflicting, brandishing their bloody swords, and at the same time reproaching them with the crimes they have committed while on earth. In another, they are suspended with the