onception of the soul varied in different
times and in different schools. It might be an insect--butterfly,
bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird--the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the
human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane--bi, hai--whose
wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black
shadow--khaibit--that is attached to every body, but which death sets
free, and which thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it
can move about at will, and go out into the open sunlight.

* In one of the Pyramid texts, Sahu-Orion, the wild hunter,
captures the gods, slaughters and disembowels them, cooks
their joints, their haunches, their legs, in his burning
cauldrons, and feeds on their souls as well as on their
bodies. A god was not limited to a single body and a single
soul; we know from several texts that Ra had _seven souls
and fourteen doubles_.

** Mr. Lepage-Renouf supposes that the soul may have been
considered as being a butterfly at times, as in Greece. M.
Lefebure thinks that it must sometimes have been incarnate
as a wasp--I should rather say a bee or a praying mantis.

*** The simple sparrow-hawk is chiefly used to denote the
soul of a god; the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the heron, or
the crane is used indifferently for human or divine souls.
It is from Horapollo that we learn this symbolic
significance of the sparrow-hawk and the pronunciation of
the name of the soul as _bai_.

[Illustration: 147.jp THE BLACK SHADOW COMING OUT INTO THE SUNLIGHT. 4]

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Naville's _Das Thebanische
Todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. civ._

Finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from
the surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and
coloured projection of the human figure, a double--_ka_--reproducing in
minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom
it belonged.[*]

* The nature of the double has long been misapprehended by
Egyptologists, who had even made its name into a kind of
pronominal form. That nature was publicly and almost
simultaneously announced in 1878, first by Maspero, and
directly afterwards by Lepage-Renouf.

[Illustration: 148.jpg THE AUGUST SOULS OF OSIRIS AnD HORUS IN ADORATION
BEFORE THE SOLAR DISK. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dumichen, of