58 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and BabyloniaAmong these new ideas was that of the Khu or“luminous”
part of man. On the recently discovered monuments of the early
period, the Khu holds a place which it lost after the rise of
Memphite influence with the Third Dynasty. We find it depicted
on the tombstones of Abydos embraced by the down-bent arms of
the Ka. The Khu, therefore, was conceived of as comprehended
in the human Ka, as forming part of it, though at the same time
as a separate entity. It was, in fact, the soul of the human Ka, and
was accordingly symbolised by the crested ibis^27. It may be that
it was in the beginning nothing more than the phosphorescent
[061] light emitted by decaying vegetation which the belated wayfarer
took for a ghost; theginn(jinn) of the modern Egyptian fellah are
similar lights which flash up suddenly from the ground. But the
earliest examples of its use on the monuments are against such an
ignoble origin, and suggest rather that it was the glorified spirit
which mounted up like a bird in the arms of its Ka towards the
brilliant vault of heaven. It is not until we come to the decadent
days of the Greek and Roman periods that the Khu appears in a
degraded form as a malignant ghost which enters the bodies of
the living in order to torment them. No traces of such a belief
are to be found in older days. The Pyramid texts speak of“the
four Khu of Horus,” “who live in Heliopolis,”and were at once
male and female, and of the Khu who brandish their arms and
form a sort of bodyguard around the god of the dead. They are
identified with the fixed stars, and more especially with those of
the Great Bear, and in the euhemeristic chronicles of Egyptian
history they become the“Manes”of Manetho, the semi-divine
dynasty which intervened between the dynasties of the gods and
of men.^28
(^27) This particular bird was chosen because its name was similar in sound to
that of the Khu. For the same reason the plover (ba) denoted the Ba or soul.
On objects found by de Morgan in the tomb of Menes at Negada, the“soul”is
represented by an ostrich.
(^28) See Chassinat,Recueil, xix. p. 23 sqq.