DOPPIO. - By this designation the Egyptologist G. Maspero indicated an incorporeal entity, called ka by the ancient Egyptians, which accompanied man from his birth like a shadow perfectly identical with the body.
This kind of second personality should not, however, be identified with the soul, called ka (v.). Although the ka abandoned man at his death, it was believed to return at intervals to the corpse or to become embodied in statues of the deceased; hence funerary offerings were made to the ka of the departed individual, while tombs were called “dwellings of the ka.”
But the nature of the ka remained exceedingly complex, so that, after the theory of the ka, various interpretations arose which explained the ka now as an abstract conception of the vital energy supplied by food (Erman), now as a tutelary genius (Steindorff, Breasted), now as the individual manifestation of the genius of the lineage (Moret), and finally as the personification of sexual energy (Jacobsohn). All these concepts may coexist in parallel, since the idea of the ka assumed, in the course of time, various and often not clearly definable aspects.