] supplementing
those of Moret, Murray and Seligman and others, have been claimed as
linking the placenta with the _ka_.

Much controversy has waged around the interpretation of the Egyptian
word _ka_, especially during recent years. An excellent summary of the
arguments brought forward by the various disputants up to 1912 will be
found in Morel's "Mysteres Egyptiens". Since then more or less
contradictory views have been put forward by Alan Gardiner, Breasted,
and Blackman. It is not my intention to intervene in a dispute as to the
meaning of certain phrases in ancient literature; but there are certain
aspects of the problems at issue which are so intimately related to my
main theme as to make some reference to them unavoidable.

The development of the custom of making statues of the dead necessarily
raised for solution the problem of explaining the deceased's two bodies,
his actual mummy and his portrait statue. During life on earth his vital
principle dwelt in the former, except on those occasions when the man
was asleep. His actual body also gave expression to all the varied
attributes of his personality. But after death the statue became the
dwelling place of these manifestations of the spirit of vitality.

Whether or not the conception arose out of the necessities unavoidably
created by the making of statues, it seems clear that this custom must
have given more concrete shape to the belief that all of those elements
of the dead man's individuality which left his body at the time of death
could shift as a shadowy double into his statue.

At the birth of a king he is accompanied by a comrade or twin exactly
reproducing all his features. This double or _ka_ is intimately
associated throughout life and in the life to come with the king's
welfare. In fact Breasted claims that the _ka_ "was a kind of superior
genius intended to guide the fortunes of the individual _in the
hereafter_" ... there "he had his abode and awaited the coming of his
earthly companion".[81] At death the deceased "goes to his _ka_, to the
sky". The _ka_ controls and protects the deceased: he brings him food
which they eat together.

It is important clearly to keep in mind the different factors involved
in the conception of the _ka_:--

(a) The statue of the deceased is animated by restoring to it the breath
of life and all the other vital attributes of which the early Egyptian
physiologist took cognisance.

(b) At the time of birth there c