53
hotepIII. along with the infant prince to the god of Thebes; and [055]
at Soleb the same Pharaoh is represented as making offerings to
his own double.^21 Indeed, it is not unfrequent to find the king and
his Ka thus separated from one another and set side by side; and
at times the Ka becomes a mere symbol, planted like a standard
at the monarch's back.
It was the Ka, therefore, which in the early days of Egyptian
religious thought was more especially associated with the divine
nature of the king. The association of ideas was assisted by the
fact that the gods, like men, had each his individual Ka. And in
the older period of Egyptian history the Ka of the god and not
the god himself was primarily the object of worship. The sacred
name of Memphis was$a-ka-Pta%,“the temple of the Ka of
Pta%,”which appears asKhikuptakhin the Tel el-Amarna letters,
and from which the Greeks derived theirAiguptos,“Egypt.”
Even in the last centuries of Egyptian independence the prayers
addressed to the bull-god Apis are still made for the most part to
his Ka.
The Ka, in fact, was conceived of as the living principle which
inspired both gods and men. Its separation from the body meant
what we call death, and life could return only when the two were
reunited. That reunion could take place only in the other world,
after long years had passed and strange experiences had been
undergone by the disembodied Ka. The 105th chapter of the
Book of the Dead contains the words with which on the day of
resurrection the Ka was to be greeted.“Hail,”says the dead man,
“to thee who wast my Ka during life! Behold, I come unto thee, I
arise resplendent, I labour, I am strong, I am hale, I bring grains [056]
of incense, I am purified thereby, and I thereby purify that which
goeth forth from thee.”Then follow the magical words by which
all evil was to be warded off:“I am that amulet of green felspar,
(^21) Cf. the illustrations in Maspero,Dawn of Civilisation, p. 259; and Lepsius,
Denkmäler, iii. 87. In Bonomi and Arundale,Gallery of Antiquities, pt. i. pi.
31, is a picture of ThothmesII.{FNSwith his Ka standing behind him.