Besides the custom of embalming persons of distinction, the Jews commonly used great burnings for their kings, made up of heaps of all sorts of aromatics, of which they made a bonfire, as a triumphant farewell to the deceased. In these they were wont to burn their bowels, their clothes, armour, and other things belonging to the deceased. Thus, it is said of Asa, that they made a very great burning for him (2 Chron. xvi. 14.), which could not be meant of his corpse in the fire, for in the same verse it is said, they buried him in his own sepulchre. This was also done at the funeral of Zedekiah. (Jer. xxxiv. 5.) And it was very probably one reason why, at the death of Jehoram, the people made no burning for him like the burning of his fathers (2 Chron. xxi. 19.), because his bowels being ulcerated by his sickness, they fell out, and to prevent the stench, were immediately interred or otherwise disposed of; so that they could not well be burnt in this pompous manner after his death; though as he was a wicked king, this ceremony might possibly have been omitted on that account also.

The burning of dead bodies in funeral piles, it is well known, was a custom prevalent among the Greeks and Romans, upon which occasion they threw frankincense, myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant articles into the fire: and this in such abundance, that Pliny represents it as a piece of profaneness, to bestow such heaps of frankincense upon a dead body, when they offered it so sparingly to their gods. And though the Jews might possibly learn from them the custom of burning the bowels, armour, and other things belonging to their kings in piles of odoriferous spices, yet they very rarely, and only for particular reasons, burnt the dead bodies themselves. We are told indeed, that the people of Jabesh-Gilead took the bodies of Saul and his sons (from the place where the Philistines had hung them up), and came to Jabesh and burnt them there (1 Sam. xxxi. 12.), but by this time their bodies must have been in such a state, that they were not fit to be embalmed; or, perhaps they were apprehensive that if they should embalm them, and so bury them, the people of Bethshan might at some future time dig them up, and fix them a second time against their walls; and therefore, the people of Jabesh might think it more advisable to recede from their common practice, and for greater security to imitate the heathen in this particular. Amos also speaks of the burning of bodies (vi. 10.); but it is evident from the words themselves, and from the context, that this was in the time of a great pestilence, not only when there were few to bury the dead, but when it was unsafe to go abroad and perform the funeral rites by interment, in which case the burning was certainly the best expedient.

In some cases the rites of sepulture were not allowed; and to this

when the body was in them. The cap, or napkin, also, which had been upon our Lord's head, he found separate, or at a little distance from the open coffin; but EXTETUALYμavor folded up in wreaths, in the form of a cap, as it had been upon our Lord's head. Dr. Benson's Life of Christ, p. 524. Wrapped together in a place by itself; as if the body had miraculously slipt out of it, which indeed was the real fact. Dr. Ward's Dissertations, p. 149.

it has been thought that there is an allusion in Job xxvii. 19. It was the opinion of the pagan Arabs that, upon the death of any person, a bird, by them called Manah, issued from the brain, which haunted the sepulchre of the deceased, uttering a lamentable scream. This notion also, the late professor Carlyle thinks is evidently alluded to in Job xxi. 32., where the venerable patriarch, speaking of the fate of the wicked, says :

He shall be brought to the grave,

And shall watch upon the raised up heap.1

The Jews showed a great regard for the burial of their dead; to be deprived of it was thought to be one of the greatest dishonours that could be done to any man: and therefore in Scripture it is reckoned one of the calamities that should befal the wicked. (Eccles. vi. 3.) In all nations there was generally so much humanity as not to prevent their enemies from burying their dead. The people of Gaza allowed Sampson's relations to come and take away his body (Judg. xvi. 31.); though one would have thought that this last slaughter which he made among them, might have provoked them to some acts of outrage even upon his dead body. But as he stood alone in what he did, none of the Israelites joining with him in his enterprises, they might possibly be apprehensive, that, if they denied him burial, the God of Israel, who had given him such extraordinary strength in his life-time, would not fail to take vengeance on them in that case, and therefore they were desirous, it may be, to get rid of his body (as afterwards they were of the ark), and glad perhaps that any one would remove such a formidable object out of their sight. Jeremiah prophesied of Jehoiakim, that he should be buried with the burial of an ass (Jer. xxii. 19.), meaning, that he should not be buried at all, but cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem, exposed to the air and putrefaction above ground, as beasts are, which is more plainly expressed afterwards, by telling us, that his body should be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost. (Jer. xxxvi. 30.) The author of that affecting elegy, the seventy-ninth psalm, when enumerating the calamities which had befallen his unhappy countrymen, particularly specifies the denial of the rites of sepulture, as enhancing their afflictions. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of heaven; the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. (Psal. lxxix. 2.)

V. The antients had not that indecent and unwholesome custom, which now prevails, of crowding all their dead in the midst of their towns and cities, within the narrow precincts of a place reputed sacred, much less of amassing them in the bosom of their fanes and temples. The burying places of the Romans were at a distance from their towns: and the Jews had their sepulchres in gardens, in fields, and in the sides of mountains.2 The graves in which they 1 Carlyle's Specimens of Arabian Poetry, p. 14. 2d edit.

2 The following description of the Tombs of the Kings (as they are termed), which are situated near the village of Gournou, on the west bank of the river Nile,

chose to be deposited, were commonly in solitary and unfrequented places. Thus we read that the demoniac of Gadara wore no clothes, and abode not in any house, but had his dwelling among the tombs (Mark v. 2, 3. 5. Luke viii. 27.); delighting in these gloomy and melancholy recesses, as most friendly and congenial to the wretched state of his mind. Josephus also states, that these sepulchres were the haunts and lurking places of those numerous and desperate bands of robbers with which Judæa was at that time infested.3 And a recent traveller, whose researches have thrown much light on the sacred writings, informs us, that these burying grounds frequently afford shelter to the weary traveller when overtaken by the night; and that the recesses are likewise a hiding place for thieves and murderers, who sally forth from them, to commit their nocturnal depredations.4

Sometimes they buried their dead in fields, over whom the opulent and families of distinction raised superb and ostentatious monuments, on which they lavished great splendour and magnificence and which they so religiously maintained from time to time in their pristine beauty and glory. To this custom our Saviour alludes in the following apt comparison: Woe unto you scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. (Matt. xxiii. 27.) The following extract from Dr. Shaw's Travels beautifully illustrates this: "If we except a few persons, who are buried within the precincts of the sanctuaries of their marabutts, the rest are carried out at a small distance from their cities and villages, where a great extent of

will illustrate the nature of the antient sepulchres, which were excavated out of the mountains. "Further in the recesses of the mountains, are the more magnificent Tombs of the Kings; each consisting of many chambers, adorned with hieroglyphics. The scene brings many allusions of Scripture to the mind; such as Mark v. 2, 3. 5., but particularly Isaiah xxii. 16. Thou hast hewed thee out a sepulchre here, as he that howeth him out a sepulchre on high, and that graveth a habitation for himself in a rock for many of the smaller sepulchres are excavated nearly half way up the mountain, which is very high. The kings have their magnificent abodes nearer the foot of the mountain; and seem, according to Isaiah xiv. 18., to have taken a pride in resting as magnificently in death as they had done in lifeAll the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory; every one in his own house. The stuccoed walls within are covered with hieroglyphics. They cannot be better described than in the words of Ezekiel, viii. 8-10. Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in; and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in, and saw and behold every form of creeping things and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed upon the wall round about. The Israelites were but copyists: the master-sketches are to be seen in all the antient temples and tombs of Egypt."-Jowett's Researches, p. 133.

1 See Capt. Light's Travels in Egypt, p. 206. Dr. Clarke's Travels, vol. iv. pp. 211, 212.

2 Ον θυμον κατεδων, πατον ανθρώπων αλεείνων. Iliad. Ζ. 302.

Το

γαρ νυν αυτας εκ δόμων οις ρησ' εγω

Μανίαις. όρος

οικούσι παρακοποι φρένων.

3 See Macknight on Mark v. 3.

4 Forbes's Oriental Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 102.

Euripidis Baccha. ver. 32, 33.

ground is allotted for the purpose. Each family has a particular part of it walled in, like a garden, where the bones of their ancestors have remained for many generations. For in these enclosures the graves are all distinct and separated, each of them having a stone placed upright both at the head and feet, inscribed with the name and title (2 Kings xxiii. 17.) of the deceased; while the intermediate space is either planted with flowers, bordered round with stones, or paved with tiles. The graves of the principal citizens are further distinguished, by having cupolas or vaulted chambers of three, four, or more square yards built over them and as these very frequently lie open, and occasionally shelter us from the inclemency of the weather, the demoniac (Mark v. 5.) might with propriety enough have had his dwelling among the tombs: and others are said (Isa. Ix. 4.) to remain among the graves and to lodge in the monuments (mountains.) And as all these different sorts of tombs and sepulchres, with the very walls likewise of their respective cupolas and enclosures, are constantly kept clean, white-washed, and beautified, they continue to illustrate those expressions of our Saviour, where he mentions the garnishing of sepulchres, and compares the scribes, pharisees, and hypocrites to whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within were full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." But though the sepulchres of the rich were thus beautified, the graves of the poor were oftentimes so neglected, that if the stones, by which they were marked, happened to fall, they were not set up again, by which means the graves themselves did not appear; they were adna, as St. Luke expresses it; they appeared not, and the men that walked over them were not aware of them. (Luke xi. 44.)2

It appears from the Scriptures, that the Jews also had family sepulchres in places contiguous to their own houses, and (as we have already observed) generally in their gardens. Such was the place in which Lazarus was interred; and such also was the grave in which the body of our Lord was deposited. Joseph of Arimathea, a person of distinction, by St. Mark called an honourable counsellor (Mark xv. 43.), mindful of his mortality, had hewn out of the rock in his garden a sepulchre, in which he intended his own remains should be reposited. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was no man yet laid. When Joseph therefore had taken the body of Jesus, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, he carried it into the tomb which he had lately hollowed out of the rock (which was not a tomb, sunk into the earth like a cave, but what is called in Isa. xxii. 16. a sepulchre on high); and rolled a great stone to the low door of the

1 Dr. Shaw's Travels, p. 385. first edition. Oxford, 1738.

2 Dr. Macknight in loc.

3 Evexnuwv boudcorns. This denotes that he was a member of the Sanhedrin. Goudeurns is the word used for senator in almost every page of the Greek writers of the Roman history.

sepulchre, effectually to block up the entrance, and secure the sacred corpse of the deceased, both from the indignities of his foes and the officiousness of his friends.

VI. A funeral feast commonly succeeded the Jewish burials. Thus after Abner's funeral was solemnised, the people came to David to eat meat with him, though they could not persuade him to do so. (2 Sam. iii. 35.) He was the chief mourner, and probably had invited them to this banquet. Of this Jeremiah speaks (xvi. 7.), where he calls it the cup of consolation, which they drank for their father or their mother; and accordingly the place where this funeral entertainment was made, is called in the next verse the house of feasting. Hosea calls it the bread of mourners. (Hos. ix. 4.) Funeral banquets are still in use among the oriental Christians.1

The usual tokens of mourning, by which the Jews expressed their grief and concern for the death of their friends and relations, were by rending their garments, and putting on sackcloth (Gen. xxxvii. 34.), sprinkling dust on their heads, wearing of mourning apparel (2 Sam. xiv. 2.), and covering the face and the head. (2 Sam xix. 4.) They were accustomed also in times of public mourning to go up to the roofs or platforms of their houses, there to bewail their misfortunes, which practice is mentioned in Isaiah xv. 3. and xxii. 1. Antiently, there was a peculiar space of time allotted for lamenting the deceased, which they called the days of mourning. (Gen. xxvii. 41. and 1. 4.) Thus the Egyptians, who had a great regard for the patriarch Jacob, lamented his death threescore and ten days. (Gen. 1. 3.) The Israelites wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days. (Deut. xxxiv. 8.) Afterwards among the Jews the funeral mourning was generally confined to seven days. Thus, besides the mourning for Jacob in Egypt, Joseph and his company set apart seven days to mourn for his father, when they approached the Jordan with his corpse. (Gen. 1. 10.) In the time of Christ, it was customary for the nearest relative to visit the grave of the deceased, and to weep there. The Jews, who had come to condole with Mary, on the death of her brother Lazarus, on seeing her go out of the house, concluded that she was going to the grave, to weep there. (John xi. 31.) A similar custom obtains to this day in Upper Egypt. We read no where of any general mourning for Saul and

1 Harmer's Observations, vol. iii. p. 19.

2" We arrived" (at one of the villages of Elephantina, an island in the Nile) "just in time to witness a coronagh or wailing for the dead. A poor woman of the village had that morning received the melancholy intelligence that her husband had been drowned in the Nile. He had been interred without her knowledge, near the spot where the body was found; and she, along with several of her female friends, was paying the unavailing tribute of lamentation to his departed shade." (Richardson's Travels, vol. i. p. 355.) "One morning," says the same intelligent traveller, "when standing among the ruins of the antient Syene, on the rocky promontory above the ferry, I saw a party of thirteen females cross the Nile to perform the lugubrious dirge at the mansions of the dead. They set up a piteous wail on entering the boat, after which they all cowered up together, wrapt in their dirty robes of beteen. On landing, they wound their way slowly and silently along the outside of the walls of the antient town, till they arrived at their place of destination, when some of them placed a sprig of flowers on the grave, and sat down