REMEMBRANCE OF THE DEAD AMONGST THE EGYPTIANS.
In Egypt, as all over the East, the lives of women amongst the wealthier classes are for the most part spent within the privacy of their homes, as it were in close confinement: they are born, live, and die in the bosom of that impenetrable sanctuary. It is only on Thursday that they go forth, with their slaves carrying refreshments and followed by hired weepers. It is a sacred duty that calls them to the public cemetery. There they have funeral hymns chanted, their own plaintive cries mingling with the sorrowful lamentations of the mourners. They shed tears and flowers on the graves of their kindred, which they afterwards cover with the meats brought by their servants, and all the crowd, after inviting the souls of the dead, partake of a religious repast, in the persuasion that those beloved shades taste of the same food and are present at the sympathetic banquet. Is there not in this superstition a distorted tradition of the dogma by which we are commanded not to forget the souls of our brethren beyond the grave?— Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, Vol. XVII.