§ 92. But when the body is about to be finally buried, the relations announce the appointed day to the judges, and to all the friends of the deceased, declaring that he is about to pass the lake of the Nome: and forty two judges being collected, and placed in a semicircle, which is prepared beyond the lake, a boat is brought up, which had been provided for the purpose, conducted by a boatman who is called, in their language, Charon, [the Silent]: whence they say that Orpheus, in former times, having travelled into Egypt, and seen this custom, invented the fable of Hades, partly from imitating what he saw, and partly from his own imagination: but when the boat was brought into the lake, before the coffin with the dead body was put on board, it was lawful, for any person who thought proper, to bring forwards his accusation against the deceased: and if he showed that the deceased had led an evil life, the judges declared accordingly, and the body was deprived of the accustomed sepulture: but if the accuser failed of establishing what he advanced, he was subject to very heavy penalties. When there had been no accuser, or when the accusation had been repelled as unjust, the relations, laying aside their mourning, pronounced encomiums on the deceased: not enlarging upon his descent, as is usual among the Greeks, for they hold that all the Egyptians are equally noble: but relating his earliest education and the course of his studies, and then his piety and justice in manhood, and his temperance, and the other virtues that he possessed, they supplicated the infernal deities to receive him as a companion of the pious: the multitude in the mean time applauded, and joined in extolling the glory of the deceased, as being about to remain to eternity with the virtuous in the regions of Hades. The body is then placed, by those who have family catacombs already prepared, in the compartment allotted to it: those who are not possessed of catacombs construct a new apartment for the purpose, in their own houses, and set the coffin upright against the firmest of the walls. Those who are debarred of the rites of burial, on account of the accusation which has been brought forwards against them, or on account of debts which they have contracted, are placed in their own houses: and then, if their children’s children happen to be prosperous, they are frequently released from the impediments of their creditors and their accusers, and at length obtain the ceremony of a magnificent funeral. § 93. It is most solemnly established in Egypt, to pay a more marked respect to their parents and their ancestors, when they are removed to their everlasting habitations. It is also usual among them to deposit the bodies of their deceased parents, as pledges for the payment of money that they borrow: and those who do not redeem these pledges are subject to the heaviest disgrace, and are deprived of burial after their death....