A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

290 TOMBS.
embellished the existence of the living being,
awaiting the prescribed time when the spirit and
the flesh were to be once more reunited, and
the mummy become man again !
Strange
but
consoling belief, to which is attributable the ex-
traordinary arts resorted to by the ancient Egyp-
tians, to beautify their tombs and to preserve
their dead bodies from decay and disfigurement
Three thousand years was the period allotted for
the soul to perform the various migrations to
which she was condemned during her banishment
from her first earthly tenement; but if before
the expiration of that time the tomb should be
violated, and its embalmed tenant destroyed,
then the soul would be sentenced to perpetual
exile in the bodies of living creatures of an
inferior order in the scale of creation.
This then is the history of those strongholds
cut into the living rock—those endless cerements
so cunningly disposed and so carefully enclosed
in the solid mummy-chest. And yet, that the
wisdom of the Egyptians was but foolishness
— !
all their precautions vain— all their cares defeated—
let the Necropolis of old Thebes, with
its yawning, rifled sepulchres, and its wilderness
of scattered bones, tell ! The
Arabian Caliphs
were the first disturbers of the Egyptian tombs,