. It was a veritable drama that was here enacted, and
recalled in its incidents the story of Osiris, the divine prototype of
all successive generations of the Egyptian dead.

The soul.

However carefully the preliminary rites of embalmment and burial might
have been performed, however sumptuous the tomb wherein the dead man
reposed, he was nevertheless almost entirely at the mercy of the
living for his welfare in the other world: he was as dependent on a
continued cult on the part of the surviving members of his family as
the gods were dependent on the constant attendance of their priests.
That portion of a man's individuality which required, even after
death, food and drink, and the satisfaction of sensuous needs, was
called by the Egyptians the _ka_, and represented in hieroglyphs by
the uplifted hands [HRG]. This _ka_ was supposed to be born together
with the person to whom it belonged, and on the very rare occasions
when it is depicted, wears his exact semblance. The conception of this
psychical entity is too vaguely formulated by the Egyptians and too
foreign to modern thought to admit of exact translation: of the many
renderings that have been proposed, perhaps "double" is the most
suitable. At all events the _ka_ has to be distinguished from the
soul, the _bai_ (in hieroglyphs [HRG] or [HRG]), which was of more
tangible nature, and might be descried hovering around the tomb in the
form of a bird or in some other shape; for it was thought that the
soul might assume what shape it would, if the funerary rites had been
duly attended to. The gods had their _ka_ and _bai_, and the forms
attributed to the latter are surprising; thus we read that the soul of
the sky Nun is Re, that of Osiris the Goat of Mendes, the souls of
Sobk are crocodiles, and those "of all the gods are snakes"; similarly
the soul of Ptah was thought to dwell in the Apis bull, so that each
successive Apis was during its lifetime the reincarnation of the god.
Other parts of a man's being to which at given moments and in
particular contexts the Egyptians assigned a certain degree of
separate existence are the "name" [HRG] _ran_, the "shadow" [HRG],
_khaibet_, and the "corpse" [HRG], _khat_.

It was, however, the _ka_ alone to which the cult of the dead was
directly addressed. This cult was a positive duty binding on the
children of a dead man, and doubtless as a rule discharged by them