________________
JUXE, 1879.]
ARCHÆOLOGICAL NOTES.
163
Museum Osiris is shown seated, and the balance when aisles were added to the church. The paintis held by Horus; this sarcophagus is referred ing, which is 17 feet long by 11, is divided into by Dr. Birch to Sethos I.-B. C. 1489. In the four compartments, two above and two below, the earliest Greek legends, which so often show an upper representing the salvation, the lower the Asiatic tinge, Homer makes Zeus the Father damnation, of souls,--that on the left above, and weigh the fates of the Greeks and Trojans, and that on the right below, exhibiting ideas essenti. again of Achilles and Hector, in golden ba ally Oriental. In the former St. Michael stands lances; and so Jupiter in the Æneid decides the | in the centre holding out the scales, and a fates of Turnus and Æneas. The primitive demon on the opposite side, dragging a number Eastern myth found its way into Christian of souls behind with a rope, tries to touch and antiquity at a very early date, and the arch- depress one ; on the other side an angel is conangel Michael, the conqueror of Satan, assumed ducting three female souls to heaven. The the place of Horus and Mithra as soul-weigher. same subject has been found in other ancient In Raphael's picture of his triumph over Satan village churches, and was doubtless of common the balance lies behind ; and St. Gregory, about occurrence. In one instance an unfortunate A.D. 600, in his sermon De Sancto Michaele, soul, whose bad deeds are outweighing his says that "on the point of separation of the good, is saved by the Virgin Mary throwing soul from the body the good and bad angels her rosary into the scale. Metrical legends of come, and the merits and demerits of the man still earlier date contain the same ideas, and are weighed : if the bad preponderate over the represent St. Michael weighing souls at the . good the soul is thrust down to hell." Few entrance of Paradise, -80 far and wide had the who have stood before Notre Dame in Paris myth spread in early medieval days. Perhaps will fail to remember the grim scene of the Last the latest serious use of the metaphor is in Judgment, sculptured in the 13th century over Paradise Lost, where, when all the elements the great central entrance, and the expression were threatened with destruction in the impendof fiendish glee on the visage of the demon as ing struggle between the angels and Satan, he tries to depress the scale filled with souls, of "The Eternal, to prevent such horrid fray, the balance held by the archangel. The same Hung forth in heaven his golden scales, yet conception is repeated over the porch of Fri
seenburg Cathedral in Switzerland, which was
Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign." erected in 1452, and where two imps are slyly
The lower right-hand compartment of the trying to pull down the scale. In pictures on the Chaldon church painting also represents a very walls of the oldest Russian churches a favourite ancient Eastern fable, namely, the ordeal of the subject is "the Serpent of Sins," winding up bridge a myth found, in one form or another, from Hell, and opening its jaws near the terrible in almost all religious systems. It is sufficient Balances where souls are weighed.
here to adduce the bridge Al-Sirat, narrow and In the most secluded part of the labyrinth sharp as a razor, stretching across Gehenna, of chalk downs in Surrey is situated the small over which the Kurán records that souls must parish of Chaldon. It is so retired that till with- pass into Paradise. The bridge Chinevat, span. in the last twenty years only tracks led to it ning the fiery gulph of Ahriman, in the ancient across the downs; how remote must it then Persian mythology, has already been mentioned. have been in the twelfth century! But Eastern It is striking to find this myth in the creeds of ideas and myths penetrated there, even at that the rudest savages, even in America, the Happy early date. On the west wall of the small Country of the Dakotah Indians is crossed antique church a large painting in red, yellow, by a very high rock, the edge of which is as and white tempera was discovered under the sharp as the sharpest knife, the good cross whitewash a few years ago, and has been safely, but the wicked fall into the clutch s of successfully restored and preserved. It was the Evil Spirit below. Colonel Godwin Austen probably executed between 1170 and 1190, reports that the Khasiâs of north-eastern Bengal
It is noticeable that whilst Homer follows the Indian law in making the light or ascending scale the demonstra- tion of innocence and success, Milton and the Church re
presentations adopt the Biblical rule of regarding it as the sign of guilt and defeat.
