[50] Professor Petrie, speaking of his discovery that it was the Egyptian custom to place masonic deposits of miniature model tools, etc., underneath the foundations of temples, and giving an account of the foundation deposits which he found beneath the pyramid temple of Ûsertesen II., at Illahûn, says: “The reason for burying such objects is yet unexplained; but it seems not unlikely that they were intended for the use of the Kas of the builders, like the models placed in tombs for the Kas of the deceased. Whether each building had a Ka, which needed ghostly repair by the builders’ Kas, is also to be considered” (Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, p. 22). We know that each building had its guardian spirit in the form of a serpent (cf. the representation of one dating from the time of Amenophis III, in Ghizeh, No. 217, published by Mariette, Mon. Div., pl. 63 b).
[51] The Book of the Dead, chaps. lxxvi.-lxxxviii.
[52] “The Egyptians were also the first to broach the opinion that the soul of man is immortal, and that when the body dies it enters into an animal which is born at the same moment, thence passing on (from one animal into another) until it has circled through all creatures of the earth, the water, and the air, after which it enters again into a new-born human frame. The whole period of the transmigration is (they say) three thousand years. There are Greek writers, some of an earlier, some of a later date, who have borrowed this doctrine from the Egyptians, and put it forward as their own.”—Herodotus, II., 123. See Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch, p. 457 et seq.
[53] For the “Story of Setna” see Vol. II. of Professor Petrie’s Egyptian Tales.
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