without the
body, but the body could not live without the _Ka_ . . . . . it was
material in just the same was as the body itself." Also, it would seem
that in certain ways it was superior to and more powerful than the body,
since the Egyptian monarchs are often represented as making offerings to
their own _Kas_ as though these were gods. Again, in the story of "Setna
and the Magic Book," translated by Maspero and by Mr. Flinders Petrie
in his "Egyptian Tales," the _Ka_ plays a very distinct part of its own.
Thus the husband is buried at Memphis and the wife in Koptos, yet the
_Ka_ of the wife goes to live in her husband's tomb hundreds of miles
away, and converses with the prince who comes to steal the magic book.

Although I know no actual precedent for it, in the case of a
particularly powerful Double, such as was given in this romance to Queen
Neter-Tua by her spiritual father, Amen, the greatest of the Egyptian
gods, it seems, therefore, legitimate to suppose that, in order to save
her from the abomination of a forced marriage with her uncle and her
father's murderer, the _Ka_ would be allowed to anticipate matters a
little, and to play the part recorded in these pages.

It must not be understood, however, that the fact of marriage with an
uncle would have shocked the Egyptian mind, since these people, and
especially their royal Houses, made a habit of wedding their own
brothers and sisters, as in this tale Mermes wed his half sister Asti.

I may add that there is authority for the magic waxen image which the
sorcerer Kaku and his accomplice used to bewitch Pharaoh. In the days of
Rameses III., over three thousand years ago, a plot was made to murder
the king in pursuance of which such images were used. "Gods of wax . .
. . . . for enfeebling the limbs of people," which were "great crimes of
death, the great abomination of the land." Also a certain "magic roll"
was brought into play which enabled its user to "employ the magic powers
of the gods."

Still, the end of these wizards was not encouraging to others, for they
were found guilty and obliged to take their own lives.

But even if I am held to have stretched the prerogative of the _Ka_,
or of the waxen image which, by the way, has survived almost to our own
time, and in West Africa, as a fetish, is still pierced with pins or
nails, I can urge in excuse that I have tried, so far as a modern may,
to reproduce something of the atmosphere and colour of Old Egyp