gestion concerning
the fourteen forms of the _ka_, to which von Bissing assigns the
general significance "nourishment or offerings". He puts the question
whether they do not "personify the elements of material and intellectual
prosperity, all that is necessary for the health of body and spirit"
(_op. cit._, p. 209).

The placenta is credited with all the varieties of life-giving potency
that are attributed to the Mother-Goddess. It therefore controls the
welfare of the individual and, like all maternal amulets (_vide supra_),
ensures his good fortune. But, probably by virtue of its supposed
derivation from and intimate association with blood, it also ministered
to his mental welfare.

In my last Rylands Lecture I referred to the probability that the
essential elements of Chinese civilization were derived from the West. I
had hoped that, before the present statement went to the printer, I
would have found time to set forth in detail the evidence in
substantiation of the reality of that diffusion of culture.

Briefly the chain of proof is composed of the following links: (a) the
intimate cultural contact between Egypt, Southern Arabia, Sumer, and
Elam from a period at least as early as the First Egyptian Dynasty; (b)
the diffusion of Sumerian and Elamite culture in very early times at
least as far north as Russian Turkestan and as far east as Baluchistan;
(c) at some later period the quest of gold, copper, turquoise, and jade
led the Babylonians (and their neighbours) as far north as the Altai and
as far east as Khotan and the Tarim Valley, where their pathways were
blazed with the distinctive methods of cultivation and irrigation; (d)
at some subsequent period there was an easterly diffusion of culture
from Turkestan into the Shensi Province of China proper; and (e) at
least as early as the seventh century B.C. there was also a spread of
Western culture to China by sea.[86]

I have already referred to some of the distinctively Egyptian traits in
Chinese beliefs concerning the dead. Mingled with them are other equally
definitely Babylonian ideas concerning the liver.

It must be apparent that in the course of the spread of a complex system
of religious beliefs to so great a distance, only certain of their
features would survive the journey. Handed on from people to people,
each of whom would unavoidably transform them to some extent, the
tenets of the Western beliefs would become shorn of many of their
details and h