Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/164

 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