There were regular courts, rising from local judgment-seats in the nomes to supreme courts at Memphis, Thebes, or Heliopolis.81 Torture was used occasionally as a midwife to truth;82 beating with a rod was a frequent punishment, mutilation by cutting off nose or ears, hand or tongue, was sometimes resorted to,83 or exile to the mines, or death by strangling, empaling, beheading, or burning at the stake; the extreme penalty was to be embalmed alive, to be eaten slowly by an inescapable coating of corrosive natron.84 Criminals of high rank were saved the shame of public execution by being permitted to kill themselves, as in samurai Japan.85