, Khaïb, the shadow, represented as a fan, or sunshade ([fig. 14]), in scenes professing to portray the next world.[34]
As all earthly forms must needs have their shadows, such was also the case with things in the world to come; there, too, the sun shone and all the optical phenomena of earth were repeated. But, not content to accept this as a simple fact, the Egyptians ascribed separate existences both to the shadows of the dead and to those of gods and genii. According to Egyptian belief a shadow might live on independently, apart from its owner, and this was exactly what it was supposed to do at the moment when death had taken place; then the Khaïb went forth alone to appear in the realm of the gods. This Ancient Egyptian idea of the independent existence of a man’s shadow recalls to our minds Chamisso’s story of Peter Schlemihl, published in 1823.[35]
Fig. 14.—Ba and Khaïb. (From “The Book of the Dead.”)
The Ka, the Åb, the Ba, the Sāhû, and the Khaïb constituted the chief elements of that which was immortal in man, but others were also occasionally included, especially one which was called the Khû,
, i.e. the Luminous.[36] To these, however, there is less frequent reference; they were of importance in local cults only, and were either included among the parts already mentioned or were so vaguely defined that they may be safely left out of account in treating of the soul as conceived by the Egyptians without danger of our conception being falsified by the omission.
When the immortal was thus resolved into its component parts at death, what then became of the human individuality which had resulted from their combined action, and how could its different parts find each other again in the next world, in order to form the new man of the resurrection? The Egyptians had evolved a very simple solution of this problem, although one which, according to our mode of thought, stands in direct contradiction to their doctrine of the soul. It was assumed that in addition to his immortal elements the man as a person of a particular appearance and character was also endowed with a kind of deathlessness, which seems to have held good only for a time, and not for ever. To this conception of a dead man, in whom soul and life were lacking but who in the interim still possessed existence, feeling, and thought, the Egyptians gave the name of Osiris.