+63+. Fear of ghosts has, perhaps, suggested certain methods of disposing of the dead body, as by interring or exposing it at a distance from the village, or burning it or throwing it into the water; other considerations, however, as is suggested above,[127] may determine, in whole or in part, these methods of dealing with the body.
+64+. 3. It may be considered an advance in the organization of the future life when the soul is supposed to go to some distant place on the earth or in the sea or in the sky.[128] This is an attempt to separate the spheres of the living and the dead, and thus at once to define the functions of the dead and relieve the living from the fear of them. The land of the dead is sometimes vaguely spoken of as lying on earth, far off in some direction not precisely defined--east, west, north, or south--in accordance with traditions whose origin is lost in the obscurity of the past.
+65+. Possibly in some cases it is the traditional original home of the tribe;[129] more often, it would seem, some local or astronomical fact has given the suggestion of the place; one Egyptian view was that the western desert (a wide mysterious region) was the abode of the departed; it was a widespread belief that the dead went to where the sun disappeared beneath the horizon.[130] Tribes living near the sea or a river often place the other world beyond the sea or the river,[131] and a ferryman is sometimes imagined who sets souls over the water.[132] Mountains also are regarded as abodes of the dead.[133] It is not unnatural that the abodes of departed souls should be placed in the sky, whose height and brightness, with its crowd of luminous bodies, made it an object of wonder and awe, and caused it to be regarded as the dwelling place of the happy gods, with whom deserving men would naturally be. Sometimes the expanse of the upper air was regarded as the home of souls (as in Samoa), sometimes a heavenly body--the sun (in India), or the moon (in the Bowditch Islands), or the stars.[134] The schemes being vague, several of these conceptions may exist side by side at the same place and time.
+66+. The occupations of the dead in these regions are held usually to be the same as those of the living; no other view is possible in early stages of social life. Generally all the apparatus of earthly life (food, utensils, weapons) is placed on the grave or with the body, and wives and slaves are slain to be the companions of the deceased.