Ere their dirge ended certain of the priests, advancing with slow steps,
lifted the bier and carried it to the edge of the gulf; then at a sign
from the Mother, hurled it feet foremost into the fiery lake below,
whilst all watched to see how it struck the flame. For this they held to
be an omen, since should the body turn over in its descent it was taken
as a sign that the judgment of mortal men had been refused in the Place
of the Immortals. It did not turn; it rushed downwards straight as a
plummet and plunged into the fire hundreds of feet below, and there
for ever vanished. This indeed was not strange since, as we discovered
afterwards, the feet were weighted.
In fact this solemn rite was but a formula that, down to the exact
words of judgment and committal, had been practised here from unknown
antiquity over the bodies of the priests and priestesses of the
Mountain, and of certain of the great ones of the Plain. So it was in
ancient Egypt, whence without doubt this ceremony of the trial of the
dead was derived, and so it continued to be in the land of Hes, for no
priestess ever ventured to condemn the soul of one departed.
The real interest of the custom, apart from its solemnity and awful
surroundings, centred in the accurate knowledge displayed by the masked
Accuser and Advocate of the life-deeds of the deceased.
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