The Egyptians were intense believers in a future state, hence the great care bestowed on their dead, for they believed that the body should be preserved in order to insure a state of bliss for the soul in the future world. Every human being had its “double,” or ghost “Ka,” as well as its ghost “Ba,” which we often find represented under the form of a human being with a hawk’s head. Sometimes the image of a man was buried with him. This was to represent his “double,” and is, therefore, called a “Ka” statue, or image. The “Ba,” or soul, was supposed to be “luminous.”
Fig. 83.—Amen, or Ammon, bronze. (P. & C.)
Fig. 84.—Ptah, from a bronze Actual Size. (P. & C.)
It is supposed that many of the animals and animal forms buried with and painted on the coffins of the Egyptian dead were, in remote times, the sacred animals or “Totems” belonging to the dead man’s family. “Totem worship” may have been the most ancient form of the Egyptian religion. The Temple of Bubastis (in the Delta) was sacred to the goddess Bast, or Pasht, the cat-headed goddess (Fig. 86). The cat was, therefore, a sacred animal or a “Totem,” in ancient Egypt, like the ibis, hawk, asp, beetle, &c., totems; and so in the district or town of Bubastis the Cat Clan, or worshippers of the cat-headed goddess Pasht, built the rock-cut temple called Speos Artemidos, near Beni-Hasan, and dedicated it to her worship.
Fig. 85.—Osiris. (P. & C.)
Fig. 86.—The Goddess Bast, or Pasht. Actual Size. (P. & C.)