That in a remote antiquity it was the custom to bury kings with their treasures is proved by various classics. Thus, for instance, we are told by Diodorus Siculus[394] that Sardanapalus, the last king of Assyria, erected in one of his courts an immense pyre, on which he burnt himself together with all his treasures, his royal ornaments, his wives and his eunuchs.
We further read in Herodotus:[395] "This same queen, Nitocris, committed the following fraud: Above the most frequented gate of the city (Babylon) she erected for herself a sepulchre, which projected from the upper part of the gate. And on this sepulchre she engraved an inscription of the following tenour: 'Whichever of the kings of Babylon who succeeds me may stand in need of money, let him open the sepulchre and take treasure as much as he likes. But let him open it in no other case than when he really needs money; because that would not be good.' This sepulchre remained intact until the kingdom passed over to Darius. Darius was vexed that he could never use the gate, and that, though treasures were lying there, and though the treasures themselves invited him, he should not be allowed to take them. But this gate he could not use, because in passing through he would have had the corpse above his head. Now, on opening the tomb he found no treasures, but only the corpse, and an inscription which was as follows: 'If thou wert not insatiable and greedy for treasures, thou wouldst not have opened the tombs of the dead.'"
This account of Herodotus proves two things; first, that it was the custom at Babylon to bury the royal dead with treasures, and, secondly, that the people were prevented by a religious fear from plundering the abodes of the dead.
We further read in Diodorus:[396] "When Pyrrhus had pillaged Ægeæ, which was the residence of the Macedonian kings, he left there the Galatians. These having learned from some people that, according to an ancient custom, large treasures were buried in the royal tombs together with the deceased, they excavated all the sepulchres, and having rifled them, they divided the treasures among themselves, but the bones of the dead they threw away. Pyrrhus upbraided them on account of this sacrilegious act, but he did not punish them because he needed them in his wars." This proves again to us that it was an ancient custom in Macedonia to bury the dead of royal houses with treasures, and that the people were deterred by a religious fear from touching them, because, although it had been known for ages that the tombs contained treasures, yet nobody had dared to plunder them.
I may further remind the reader of the large treasure of elaborately ornamented gold and silver vases and other jewels, as well as of bronze vessels and vases, arms, etc., recently discovered in a tomb at Palestrina in Italy (the ancient Præneste), and attributed to the seventh century B.C.,—"that period at which the influence of the civilization and industry of the East dominated in Etruria and Latium, before those countries became subject to the force of Hellenic genius—the period when the two currents of Assyrian and Egyptian luxury and thought had become intermingled in their effect upon art, and spread by the Phœnician artisans and traders through the Western countries whither they carried their productions, ornamented according to the ideas they had imbibed, from the banks of the Euphrates on the one side, and the Nile on the other."[397]
I also call attention to the sepulchre of Corneto, the contents of which, as I have before stated, are in the Museum of Berlin. This tomb, which belongs to an epoch anterior to the influence of Greek culture in Italy, and therefore anterior to the seventh century B.C., contains not only the armour and weapons, but also the whole household furniture, copper kettles, drinking vessels, and so forth, of a rich warrior. I hardly think it necessary to remind the reader of the custom in ancient Egypt of burying the dead with treasures, for all the collections of Egyptian antiquities in the world are procured from Egyptian tombs.
My learned friend Dr. Karl Blind, in his excellent pamphlet, entitled 'Fire Burial,' cites the Odin Law in Scandinavia, which reads as follows:—"Odin ordained that the dead should be burnt, and that everything that had been theirs should be carried to the pyre. He said that every one should go up to Walhalla with as many riches as would be heaped upon his pyre, and that he should enjoy in Walhalla all those things also which he had hidden away in the earth. The ashes should be thrown into the sea, or be buried deep in the soil; but for illustrious men a mound should be raised as a token of remembrance."
Dr. Blind also gives in the same pamphlet the description of Beowulf's funeral, to prove that it was also the habit with the Anglo-Saxons to burn their dead with treasures:—
"Geatland's men for him then made
A pyre broad, most firmly built,