+The dead,+ in their turn, depart into the mysterious unseen which looms so largely in the thoughts of the living, and burial and mourning rites are shaped by many different principles depending upon theories of the nature of spirits, affection for the dead, the safety of his soul, fear of malignant influences, etc. But the {56} interpretation of the religious rites which attended every crisis in life becomes unusually difficult when the community suffer a loss, and perhaps no other study stands so much in need of careful 'comparative' treatment. Unfortunately Palestine has furnished no funerary texts, and little direct evidence; the dead 'go to their fate,' the king of Mitanni fasts on the day he hears of the death of Amenhotep III., and Zakarbaal of Byblos offers to show Wenamon the tomb where the members of a former embassy sleep (_lit._ lie, or pass the night). A people accustomed to the annual death and revival of nature might easily formulate theories of the survival of the dead, and care is accordingly taken to provide for the needs of the deceased (p. 35). But the same thoughts are not necessarily symbolised by the same rites. Thus, cremation, the earlier custom, may have been intended to sever the soul from the body, to destroy the haunting spirit, or to prevent contamination and contagion. However, the subsequent use of the Gezer crematorium by those who practised inhumation involved a continuity of thought, albeit with some adaptation and adjustment, since identical conceptions of death and the dead scarcely encircled the two distinct customs. This is instructive for the growth of {57} complex ideas, and the subsequent prohibition in Palestine of certain mourning rites may find a probable explanation in their association with cults which were regarded as illegitimate.