ānkh ([fig. 3]). To it the king presents offerings of every kind and prefers his petition for gifts of the gods in exchange His Personality replies: “I give unto thee all Life, all Stability, all Power, all Health, and all Joy (enlargement of heart); I subdue for thee the peoples of Nubia (Khent), so that thou mayest cut off their heads.” In bas-reliefs of the same period which represent the birth of Amenophis III.,[9] his Ka is born at the same time as the king, and both are presented to Amen Rā, as two boys exactly alike ([fig. 4]), and blessed by him. About this time the kings began to build temples to their own Personalities, and appointed priests to them; and from time to time the sovereign would visit his temple to implore from himself his own protection, and still greater gifts. So long as the king walked the earth, so long his “living Ka, lord of Upper and Lower Egypt, tarried in his dwelling, in the Abode of Splendour (
Pa Dûat)”;[10] for his Ka was himself, independent of him, superior to him, and yet his counterpart and bound up with him.
Fig. 4.—−The infant king, Amenophis III. and his Ka, presented to Amen Rā, the god of Thebes, by two Nile gods, and by Horus. (From the temple of Amenophis III., at Luxor.)[11]
The disjunction of the Personality from the Person was not, however, rigorously and systematically insisted upon; the two were indeed separate, but were so far one as to come into being only through and with each other. A man lived no longer than his Ka remained with him, and it never left him until the moment of his death. But there was this difference in their reciprocal relations: the Ka could live without the body, but the body could not live without the Ka. Yet this does not imply that the Ka was a higher, a spiritual being; it was material in just the same way as the body itself, needing food and drink for its well-being, and suffering hunger and thirst if these were denied it. In this respect its lot was the common lot of Egyptian gods; they also required bodily sustenance, and were sorely put to it if offerings failed them and their food and drink were unsupplied.
After a man’s death his Ka became his Personality proper; prayers and offerings were made to the gods that they might grant bread and wine, meat and milk, and all good things needful for the sustenance of a god to the Ka of the deceased.[12] Offerings were also made to the Ka itself, and it was believed that from time to time it visited the tomb in order to accept the food there provided for it. On such occasions it became incorporate in the mummy, which began to live and grow (
rûd), or renew itself as do plants and trees (