56 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babyloniagathered from the fact that the Egyptian bas-reliefs sometimes
represent the offerings of food made to the dead or to the gods
inside the arms of the symbol of the Ka^23. When we remember
thatvivandeis nothing more than the Latinvivenda,“the things
on which we live,”there arises at least the possibility of an
etymological connection between the double and the principle of
life which it once symbolised.^24
Now, in my Hibbert Lectures on theReligion of the Ancient
Babylonians, I pointed out that the early Sumerian inhabitants
of Babylonia held a belief which is almost precisely the same
as that of the Egyptians in regard to the Ka. In Babylonia also,
everything had its Zi or“double,”and the nature of this Zi is
in no way distinguishable from that of the Egyptian Ka. As in
Egypt, moreover, the gods had each his Zi as well as men and
things, and, as in Egypt, it was the Zi of the god rather than
the god himself which was primarily worshipped. So marked is
[059] the resemblance between the two conceptions, that in working
it out on the Babylonian side, I could not resist the conviction
that there must have been some connection between them. That
was sixteen years ago. Since then discoveries have been made
and facts brought to light which indicate that a connection really
did exist between the Babylonia and the Egypt of the so-called
prehistoric age, and have led me to believe, with Hommel, de
Morgan, and others, that Babylonia was the home and cradle
of the Pharaonic Egyptians. In Sumerian the word Zi signified
“life,”and was denoted by the picture of a flowering reed. It was
the life on which was imprinted the form of the body that was for
a time its home, and its separation from the body meant the death
(^23) It is noticeable that while the Tel el-Amarna letters show that the actual
pronunciation of the word Ka was Ku,Ha-ka-Ptah, the sacred name of
Memphis, being writtenKhi-ku-Ptakh(Aiguptos), kuwas“food”in the
Sumerian of primitive Babylonia.
(^24) In hisÉtudes de Mythologie et d'Archéologie égyptiennes, i. p. 61, Professor
Maspero gives“cake”as the original sense ofKa, which, however, he explains
as“a cake of earth,”and hence“substance.”