.

But the new idea is clearly expressed. It is no longer necessary
to fill the burial chamber with a mass of household furniture for
the use of the dead. All these things can be carved on the wall
of the burial chamber and so made effective for his use. It was
in any case necessary to supply his food by means of the
offerings, and it was quite as easy to supply all his other
necessities in the same way. In other words, there is a distinct
growth in the use of magic to benefit the dead. At the same time,
we find the growth of the custom of supplying a special abode for
the _ka_--a simulacrum of the man, which assisted the _ka_ to
retain the form of the living man and to remember his identity.

The tendency of this period is then to place a greater dependence
on magic than on food, drink, and grave furniture. It is,
therefore, not surprising to find introduced, for the first time,
the use of magical texts in the burial chamber,--the so-called
Pyramid Texts. In the burial chamber in the pyramid of Unas, last
king of the Fifth Dynasty, and in the pyramids of the kings of
the Sixth Dynasty, the walls are covered with long magical texts
or chapters--the oldest form of the so-called book of the dead
or "book of the going forth by day." The texts were probably
somewhat older, but are now used for the first time in this
manner, no doubt owing to the increased facility in carving
stone. In these the various powers of the other world are invoked
by the incidents of the Osiris-Isis legend, to preserve the dead
body, to feed the _ka_, and to assist the other spirit, the _ba_,
in its struggles with supernatural powers.

The pyramid texts introduce us to three important ideas,--(1) a
curious plurality of the spirit existence, (2) a condition of
immortality better than that of the old underworld or Earu, and
(3) most important of all, the identification of the king with
Osiris according to the terms of the Osiris-Isis legend.

In all the older offering formulas it is only the _ka_ spirit
which is mentioned. Here is the body perishable and destructible;
here is the life, the _ka_ which fills every limb and vessel of
the body and must, therefore, have the same form. When death
comes, the _ka_ spirit, the image of the man, remains near the
body, and this spirit it was which was the object of the rites
and offerings in the funerary chapel. But besides this _ka_, it
appears for the first time that the king at any rate poss