The Washington times., 1923-03-11

Eat on Its Return to. ths Tpnlb.
a GREAT many persons have
~ been reading about tents 81
old King Tut-anIh- tomb
in the Valley of the Kings. al have
been wondering why on ear ali those
things, precious and otherwise ete stuck
into the place; and particularly why mum
nified launches ~lof yenison, mun1haified
baked ducks. legs Of beef and legs Of
lamb, mummifed vegetables. cakes and
bread, and, in fact, whole mummified
restaurant were included.
Next to these highly preserved, but
surely unappetizing viands, curiosity has
been most aroused as to why SO many
seeming toys should also have been placed
in the tomb! side by side with wonderful
jewels, robes, alabaster vases and similar
treasures These toys represent all sorts
of human activities.
There is, for instance, toy boat about
five feet long, in which little wooden oars
men sit at the oars, and around it are a
fleet of small boats in which are other
oarsnen and attendants. There are beau
tifully carved wooden figures shown in
the act Of making bread, cooking, clean
ing out the palace, winnowing grain;
there are miniature harp players and
other musicians; there are tiny, scantily
clad ladies, and, in fact, figurines repre-
senting every one of the people who con-
ceivably could be busy about and in the
palace of an ancient Egyptian king.
Yet every one Of these objects had
certain specific reason for being put in
Tut-ankh-amen's tomb. Every one Of
them was designed for his pleasure, ease,
comfort and safety after death.
And those reasons existed in the very
queer things that the ancient Egyptians
believed happened to one of them when
he quit this world for the Great Beyond.
For one thing, every one of these little
toys stood for actual living beings, who
in an earlier and more cruel age on the
Nile were buried alive with the dead king.
Similarly, the mummifed meats, lOaves Of
bread and other foods were at this same
cncient time not mummifed, but placed
IN the grave as fresh as the human sac
riflces who accompanied them.
If there was one fact that, above all
others, the ancient Egyptians realized, it
was that we are short time on earth and
very long time, indeed, dead. But they
believed, very firmly, that we go on living
after we are dead.
After death, according to their ideas,
the dead person split up into, roughly,
five parts. These comprised the Ka, or
spiritual double; the Ba-Bird which was
the soul both of this double and of the
heart; the Khu, which was the indestruc-
tibIe and immortal soul; the Sahu, which
was the spirit body that the Khu could
inhabit at pleasure, and the Khaibit, or
the shadow Of the body itself.
It was for the Ka that the mummifed
foods and many of the objects placed
within the tomb were intended. The Ka, or
"double," Came into existence, the Egypt
ians believed, when baby was born. It
was what we would to-day call Guard
ian Angel" Although it was wholly in
dependent and distinct from the human
body, yet it's abode was in that body, and
it was supposed to guide, direct and keep
watch over and to live in chat body until
the body died.
When the body did dies:the Ka did not
die with it, r:
The Ka was supposed to wander among
the worlds wherever it willed, but it came
back to the tomb now and then for sus-
tenance and meditation.
Sometimes it went, into the num-
mified body swathed IN the sarcophagus,
but sometimes it did not care to do this.
So lifelike, beautifully made statues of
the PharaOh-or whoever else could af-
ford it--were prepared into which the Ka
might go if it chose.
In the accounts of the opening of Tut
ankh-amen's tomb much mention has