their spirits hovered about them; but when once they perceived their visage begin to change, as it would in that time in those warm countries, all hopes of a return to life were then at an end. After a revolution of humours, which, according to some authors, is completed in three days, the body tends naturally to putrefaction; and by consequence, Martha had reason to say, that her brother's body, which appears by the context to have been laid in the sepulchre on the same day he died, was now on the fourth day become offensive. But it appears from an incident in the same narrative, that in Judea they were accustomed to visit the grave of their deceased relations after the third day, merely to lament their loss, and give vent to their grief. If this had not been a common practice, the people that came to comfort the sisters of Lazarus, would not so readily have concluded, when Mary went hastily out to meet her Saviour," She goeth to the grave to weep there." The Turkish women continue to follow this custom; they go before sun-rising on Friday, the stated day of their worship, to the grave of the deceased, where with many tears and lamentations, they sprinkle their monuments with water and flowers. The Persians also visit the sepulchres of their principal imams or prelates; and the Mahommedans in Hindostan follow the same practice, which they probably learned from their neighbours the Persians, going to the grave, and lamenting their departed friends ten days after their decease. The Syrian women also proceed in companies on certain days to the tombs of their relations, which are built at a little distance from their towns, to weep there; and on these occasions they commonly indulge in the deepest expressions of grief. When Le Bruin was at Rama, he saw a very great company of these mourning women going out of the town to weep at the tombs. He followed them, and seated himself on an elevated spot, adjacent to their sepulchres, near the place where they made their usual lamentations. They first went and placed themselves on the tombs, and wept there; after remaining about half an hour, some of them

rose up and formed a ring, holding each other by the hands. Quickly two of them quitted the others, and took their station in the centre of the ring, where they made so much noise in screaming and clapping their hands, as, together with their various contortions, might, in the opinion of the traveller, have subjected them to the suspicion of insanity. After that they returned, and seated themselves to weep again, till they gradually withdrew to their homes. The dresses they wore were such as they generally used, white, or any other colour; but when they rose up to form a circle together, they put on a black veil over the upper parts of their persons. Such, it may be concluded, was the weeping at Rama, described in the prophecies of Jeremiah: "A voice was heard in Rama, lamentation and bitter weeping; Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not *."

In other parts of Palestine and Syria, the friends and relations of the deceased went occasionally to the chambers or cupolas, which were built over the graves, to meditate on their loss, and indulge their grief in those remote and solemn retirements. This seems to have been a very general custom, and to have found its way into countries very distant from the land of promise. Humboldt records a curious and interesting fact of his discovering, in the empire of Mexico, one or two of these sepulchral monuments, with a chamber over the grave, in the fashion of the east; a circumstance which countenances the idea, that the Mexicans came originally from Asia, where that mode of constructing sepulchres prevailed. The ancient Hebrews had an idolatrous custom of going among the tombs, to receive dreams, by which they endeavoured to form a judgment of events, and how to manage their affairs; for the prophet Isaiah charges them with remaining among the graves, and lodging in the monuments; which is rendered by the Seventy, sleeping in the tombs upon the account of dreams: and it is reasonable to believe, that the sepulchre of Moses was designedly

*Jer. xxxi. 15.

concealed, lest in future times it should become the scene of superstitious veneration, or gross idolatry.

Oil is now presented in the east, to be burnt in honour of the dead, whom they reverence with a religious kind of homage. Mr Harmer thinks it most natural to suppose, that the prophet Hosea refers to a similar practice, when he upbraids the Israelites with carrying oil into Egypt. They did not carry it thither in the way of lawful commerce; for they carried it to Tyre without reproof, to barter it for other goods. It was not sent as a present to the king of Egypt; for the Jewish people endeavoured to gain the friendship of foreign potentates with gold and silver. It was not exacted as a tribute; for when the king of Egypt dethroned Jehoahaz the king of Judah, and imposed a fine upon the people, he did not appoint them to pay so much oil, but so much silver and gold. But if they burnt oil in those early times in honour of their idols, and their departed friends, and the Jews sent it into Egypt with that intention, it is no wonder the prophet so severely reproaches them for their conduct. Oil is in modern times very often presented to the objects of religious veneration in Barbary and Egypt. The Algerines, according to Pitts, when they are in the mouth of the straits, throw a bundle of wax candles, together with a pot of oil over board, as a present to the marabot or saint who lies entombed there, on the Barbary shore, near the sea.

The custom of putting tears into the ampulla or urnæ lacrymales, so well known among the Romans, seems to have been more anciently in use in Asia, and particularly among the Hebrews. These lacrymal urns were of different materials, some of glass, some of earth, and of various forms and shapes. They were placed on the sepulchres of the deceased as a memorial of the affection and sorrow of their surviving relations and friends. It will be difficult to account, on any other supposition, for the following expressions of the Psalmist: "Put thou my tears into thy bottle *." If this view be admitted, the meaning will

*Psa. lvi. 8.

be: "Let my distress, and the tears. I shed in consequence of it, be ever before thee."

The kings and princes of the oriental regions, are often subjected to trial after their decease by their insulted and oppressed people, and punished according to the degree of their delinquency. While the chosen people of God were accustomed to honour, in a particular manner, the memory of those kings who had reigned over them with justice and clemency, they took care to stamp some mark of posthumous disgrace upon those who had left the world under their disapprobation. The sepulchres of the Jewish kings were at Jerusalem; where, in some appointed receptacle, the remains of their princes were deposited; and from the circumstance of these being the cemetery for successive rulers, it was said when one died and was buried there, that he was gathered to his fathers. But several instances occur in the history of the house of David, in which, on various accounts, they were denied the honour of being entombed with their ancestors, and were deposited in some other place in Jerusalem. To mark, perhaps, a greater degree of censure, they were taken to a small distance from Jerusalem, and laid in a private tomb. Uzziah, who had, by his presumptuous attempt to seize the office of the priesthood, which was reserved by an express law for the house of Aaron, provoked the wrath of heaven, and been punished for his temerity with a loathsome and incurable disease," was buried with his fathers in the field of the burial which belonged to the kings; for they said, He is a leper*." It was undoubtedly with a design to make a suitable impression on the mind of the reigning monarch, to guard him against the abuse of his power, and teach him respect for the feelings and sentiments of that people for whose benefit chiefly he was raised to the throne, that such a stigma was fixed upon the dust of his offending predecessors. He was, in this manner, restrained from evil, and excited to good, according as he was fearful of being execrated, or desi

* 2 Chron, xxvi. 23.

rous of being honoured after his decease. This public mark of infamy was accordingly put on the conduct of Ahaz: "They buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem, but they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel *."

The Egyptians had a custom, in some measure similar to this, only it extended to persons of every rank and condition. As soon as a man died, he was ordered to be brought to trial; the public accuser was heard; if he proved that the deceased had led a bad life, his memory was condemned, and he was deprived of the honours of sepulture. Thus were the Egyptians affected by laws which extended even beyond the grave, and every one, struck with the disgrace inflicted on the dead person, was afraid to reflect dishonour on his own memory and that of his family. But what was singular, the sovereign himself was not exempted from this public inquest when he died. The whole kingdom was interested in the lives and administration of their sovereigns, and as death terminated all their actions, it was then deemed for the welfare of the community that they should suffer an impartial scrutiny, by a public trial, as well as the meanest of their subjects. In consequence of this solemn investigation, some of them were not ranked among the honoured dead, and consequently were deprived of public burial. The custom was singular; the effect must have been powerful and influential. The most haughty despot, who might trample on laws human and divine in his life, saw by this rigorous inquiry, that at death he also should be doomed to infamy and execration f. "What degree of conformity," says Mr Burder, "there was between the practice of the Israelites and the Egyptians, and with whom the custom first originated, may be difficult to ascertain and decide; but the latter appears to be founded on the same principle as that of the former; and as it is more circumstantially detailed, affords us an agreeable explanation of a rite but slightly mentioned in the Scriptures."

2 Chron, xxviii. 27.

+Franklin's Hist. of An. and Mod. Egypt.