curious plurality of the spirit existence, (2) a condition of
immortality better than that of the old underworld or Earu, and
(3) most important of all, the identification of the king with
Osiris according to the terms of the Osiris-Isis legend.

In all the older offering formulas it is only the _ka_ spirit
which is mentioned. Here is the body perishable and destructible;
here is the life, the _ka_ which fills every limb and vessel of
the body and must, therefore, have the same form. When death
comes, the _ka_ spirit, the image of the man, remains near the
body, and this spirit it was which was the object of the rites
and offerings in the funerary chapel. But besides this _ka_, it
appears for the first time that the king at any rate possesses
also a soul called a _ba_. In later times we see that every man
possessed a _ba_, and we learn that each god possessed several
_ba's_. But it is in the pyramid texts that we learn for the
first time of the _ba_ of a man, and that man is a king. When
death comes, the _ba_ takes flight in the form of a bird or
whatever form it wills. All seems confused. The _ka_ was near the
body, the _ka_ was in the field of Earu, under the earth
ploughing and sowing; the _ba_ is fluttering on the branches of
the tree on earth, the _ba_ has fled like a falcon to the
heavens, and has been set as a star among the stars. The dead
king lives with the gods and is fed by them. The goddesses give
him the breast. He lives in the Island of Food. He lives in Earu,
the Underworld, a land like Egypt, with fields and canals and
flood and harvest. He shares with the gods in the offerings made
in the great temples on earth.

It is quite clear that all this is an expression of