Machine summary:
SELIGMAN, in his paper on the survival in Modern Egypt of a ka- belief, has collected a consider• able number of examples from various informants, but my own researches among a good many Egyptians of the simpler kind, carried on in the first half of 1914, met with· · little result, although I questioned several old men whom I had previously found well stocked with folklore.
Ukht is probably preferred, to prevent confusion with the demon qarineh known and feared in every Egyptian family, ever prowling to 'snatch away new-born children, sometimes leaving changelings in their place, the equiva- * The use of the special tabernacle is worthy of note ; it seems to point to a pre-Islamic time when some kinds of spirits would require an abode.
\Ve may compare the practice of a mediaeval African people, the Beja, who in the days of Makrizi were not yet converted to Islam, and of whom he· relates that each family had a priest who set up a tent of skius in which he consulted the " spirit;" · lent of the Babvlonian Labarti1 or the later Jewish Lilith2 and probably derived from the child-snatching demon feared by the ancient Egyptians3• The ancient Egyptian idea of the ka underwent in the course of ages many developments and even sophistica• tions, some of them early in history, but it probably kept among the illiterate subject classes, especially the peasants, its original simplicity as a protective genius, attached through life to man and welcoming him in the Elysian Fields.