Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/220

A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. because, for a moment, they awoke their dormant thoughts and feehngs and gave them ghmpses of the true Hfe, the hfe above ground and in the sunshine.^ If they were kept waiting too long they became angry and revenged themselves upon those who had caused their sufferings. Woe to the family or city which was not careful to interest the dead in its stability and thus to associate them with its prosperity! ^ These beliefs seem to have been common to all ancient peoples during that period of their existence which is lost in the shadow of prehistoric times. From India to Italy all the primitive forms of public and private rights betray their presence. For this fact and its consequences we may refer our readers to the fine work of M. Fustel de Coulange, La Cite antique.^ together in his Cite antique (p. 14). We shall be content with quoting three : "Son of Peleus," said Neoptolemus, " take this drink which is grateful to the dead ; come and drink this blood" (Hecuba, 536). Electra says when she pours a libation; " This drink has penetrated the earth ; my father has received it " (Choephoroj, 162). And listen to the prayer of Orestes to his dead father : " Oh my father, if I live thou shalt have rich banquets ; if I die thou wilt have no portion of those smoking feasts which nourish the dead" (Choephoroe, 482-484). Upon the strange persistence of this belief, traces of which are still found in Eastern Europe, in Albania, in Thessaly, and Epirus, the works of Heuzey {Missioji archcologiqtie de Mackioine, p. 156), and Albert Dumont {/e Balkan et l' Adriatiqiie, pp. 354-356), maybe consulted. Some curious details relating to the funeral feasts of the Chinese are to be found in the Comptes rendus de FAcadhnie des Inscriptions, 1877, p. 325. There are some striking points of resemblance between the religion of China and that of ancient Egypt ; in both one and the other the same want of power to develop may be found. Taking them as a whole, both the Chinese and the Egyptians failed to emerge from the condition of fetichism. 1 In the eleventh book of the Odyssey it is only after " they have drunk deep draughts of black blood " that the shades are capable of recognising Ulysses, of understanding what he says and answering. The blood they swallowed restored their intelligence and powers of thought. ^ The speeches of the Greek orators are full of proofs that these beliefs had a great hold upon the popular mind, even as late as the time of Demosthenes. In contested cases of adoption they always laid great stress upon the dangers which would menace the city if a family was allowed to become extinct for want of pre- cautions against the failure of the hereditary line ; there would then be some neglected tomb where the dead never received the visits of gift-bringing friends, a neglect which would be visited upon the city as a whole as the accomplice in such abandonment. Such an argument and others like it may not seem to us to be of great judicial value, but the talent of an Isjeus understood how to make it tell with an audience, or we should not find it so often repeated in his pleadings (see G. Perrot, L Eloquence politique et judiciare a Athenes. Les Precurseurs de Detnosthene, PP- 359-364)- 2 Seventh edition, Hachette, i8mo, 1879.