I now come to another very remarkable point of coincidence between the Egyptian and the Indo-European religions. The Ka or Genius. When we speak of a man of genius, of a genius for poetry or for warfare, or of being inspired by the genius of the place, we are often forgetful of the original use of the word genius. The genius was a god, "sanctus et sanctissimus deus," as Servius calls him, in the religion of the Romans, worshipped with libations, incense and garlands of flowers. Every man had his own genius, which was to be propitiated by sacrificial offerings, and so had every god and even every locality. The genius was a sort of spiritual double of each individual. Men swore by their own genius, by the genius of Rome, of the gods, or of the emperor. Very similar facts are to be found in the Greek and in the Persian religions. The Fravishis in the religion of Zoroaster were heavenly types of created things, whether gods, men, mountains, streams or other objects, and formed a divine society, the guardian angels, as it were, of the good creation. Each individual thing was furnished with its Fravishi. On the Persian monuments, especially those of Persepolis, the king's Fravishi is repre subject of the development of dogma, no history is more instructive than that of Buddhism. 148 sented standing close to the king, just as the royal ka is represented on Egyptian monuments down to the times of Vespasian. The notion was deeply rooted in all the branches of the Indo-European family, and has been preserved in many of the superstitions still current among us. You remember how in the novel of Waverley the Highland chieftain saw his own wraith. The water-wraith would in classical language be called the genius of the stream or of the billows, and this not in mere poetical phraseology, but in the severe prose of every-day life. The belief itself is not limited to the Egyptian and Indo-European families, but is nearly universal. "Everywhere," as Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us, "we find expressed or implied the belief that each person is double; and that when he dies, his other self, whether remaining near at hand or gone far away, may return, and continues capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his friends." But the development of this belief among the Egyptians is in many of its details surprisingly similar to the corresponding process among Indo-Europeans. 1 The Egyptian word corresponding to the Latin genius is ka. Its original signification, as I have recently endeavoured to show, in a paper read before the Society of Biblical Literature, is image. The use of the Greek 2 1 Fortnightly Review, May 1, 1870, p. 537. 2 Transactions, Vol. VI. pp. 494-508. elowλov and the Latin imago in the sense of ghost is well known. The oblations which in the funereal formulæ are made to the ka of the departed are really made to his image. It is quite true that, as Dr. Hincks pointed out many years ago, the word ka was not introduced into the Suten-hotep-tā till the twelfth dynasty; but the word itself in its religious signification is as old as the language, as far back as we can trace it, and it enters with that signification into a large number of proper names of the earliest times; so that at all events no new doctrine or practice was introduced when idolatry in the strictest sense of the term, namely, the worship of idola, was in so many words made part of the religious prayers of the Egyptians. It is not to be supposed that so intelligent a people as the Egyptians were ignorant of the absurdity of Iliad, xxiii. 72. 1 Τῆλέ με εἴργουσι ψυχαί, εἴδωλα καμόντων. Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago. Æn. ii. 772. Ib. vi. 464. 2 The hen ka, or minister of the ka, is represented on the oldest monuments. In Denkmäler, ii. pl. 23, he occurs three times presenting offerings. In pl. 25 he is at the head of a procession of persons, each bearing offerings; he himself is pouring lustral water. Elsewhere he is represented offering incense; in pl. 58 he is doing so to statues of the departed. 150 propitiating the wooden or stone images of their ancestors or of themselves. It is the living image which is said to be worshipped, and was supposed to reside in the wood or stone. There is an ancient text1 which, in reference to Ptah, the chief divinity of Memphis, whom the Greeks identified with Hephaestos as the inventor of the arts, distinctly speaks of the gods as being made through his agency to enter into their bodies, namely, their images of wood or stone. When enumerating the experiences which tend to generate the belief in a double personality, Mr. Herbert Spencer speaks of the shadow which, following a savage everywhere and moving as he moves, suggests to him the idea of his duality, the shadow being perhaps considered as a specific something which forms part of him; and he adds: 66 A much more decided suggestion of the same kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face and figure in water, imitating him as it does in his form, colours, motions, grimaces. When we remember that not unfrequently a savage objects to have his portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries away a representation of him carries away some part of his being, we see how probable it is that he thinks his double in the water is a reality in some way belonging to him." I quote these words in order to suggest to you the 1 Sharpe, "Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. I. pl. 30. kind of impression made upon a people who must have worked through a long course of years before they produced such marvels of life-like reality as some of the portrait sculptures of the age of the Pyramids. The art of sculpture was intimately connected with their religion, and its merits and demerits arise from this connection. It is not true, as is commonly supposed, that the Egyptians were not able, like the Greeks, to represent in sculpture motion and activity. They did this, and they did it wonderfully well, as small statues in the Museum at Bulaq abundantly show; but most of the statues of this description have perished, like the private houses to which they belonged. But the statues of the gods and ancestors were intended to represent, not the concrete activity of a single moment, but the abstraction and repose of eternity. As the Iranian Fravishi is represented accompanying the Persian king, so is the Egyptian ka, or royal living image or genius, depicted in numberless representations. As the Roman swore by the genius of the emperor, so did the Egyptian by the ka of his king. As the Roman appeased his genius, so is the Egyptian king frequently sculptured in the act of propitiating his own ka. Votive tablets are addressed to the royal ka in company with Ptah or other gods. Each of the gods had his ka or genius. And as the Persians, Greeks and Romans, had their local genius, so had the Egyptians. The kau, like the genii, manes and lares (who |