61
to return there. To the gods accordingly was committed the care
of the Ba, and of seeing that it was properly provided for. By
the power of prayer and magical incantation, the various articles [064]
of food, or, more strictly speaking, their doubles, were identified
with the gods, and communicated by the gods to the soul. Long
before the days when the Pyramid texts had been compiled, this
theory of the nourishment of the soul was applied also to the
nourishment of the Ka, and the older belief in the material eating
and drinking of the Ka had passed away. All that remained of it
was the habitual offering of the food to the dead, a custom which
still lingers among the fellahin of Egypt, both Moslem and Copt.
Besides the double and the two souls, there was yet another
immortal element in the human frame. This was the heart, the seat
both of the feelings and of the mind. But it was not the material
heart, but its immaterial double, which passed after death into the
other world. The material heart was carefully removed from the
mummy, and with the rest of the intestines was usually cast into
the Nile. Porphyry^32 tells us that in his time, when the bodies
of the wealthier classes were embalmed, the Egyptians“take out
the stomach and put it into a coffer, and, holding the coffer to the
sun, protest, one of the embalmers making a speech on behalf
of the dead. This speech, which Euphantos translated from his
native language, is as follows:‘O Lord the Sun, and all ye gods
who give life to man, receive me and make me a companion of
the eternal gods. For the gods, whom my parents made known
to me, as long as I have lived in this world I have continued
to reverence, and those who gave birth to my body I have ever
honoured. And as for other men, I have neither slain any, nor
defrauded any of anything entrusted to me, nor committed any
other wicked act; but if by chance I have committed any sin in
my life, by either eating or drinking what was forbidden, not [065]
of myself did I sin, but owing to these members,’—at the same
(^32) De Abst.iv. 10.