ANCIENT
EGYPTIAN CONCEPT OF THE SOUL
![](640px-Book_of_the_Dead_Fragment,_ROM,_3.jpg)
Fragment
from Egyptian Book of the Dead
The
ancient Egyptians believed that a soul (k/b; Egypt. pron. ka/ba)
was made up of many parts. In addition to these components of
the soul, there was the human body (called the, occasionally a
plural hw, meaning approximately "sum of bodily parts").
According
to ancient Egyptian creation myths, the god Atum created the world
out of chaos, utilizing his own magic. Because the earth was created
with magic, Egyptians believed that the world was imbued with
magic and so was every living thing upon it. When humans were
created, that magic took the form of the soul, an eternal force
which resided in and with every human being. The concept of the
soul and the parts which encompass it has varied from the Old
Kingdom to the New Kingdom, at times changing from one dynasty
to another, from five parts to more. Most ancient Egyptian funerary
texts reference numerous parts of the soul: Khet or the "physical
body", Sah or the "spiritual body", Ren or the
"name, identity", Ba or the "personality",
Ka or the "double", Ib or the "heart", Shut
or the "shadow", Sekhem or the "power, form",
and Akh or the combined spirits of a dead person that has successfully
completed its transition to the afterlife. Rosalie David, an Egyptologist
at the University of Manchester, explains the many facets of the
soul as follows :
The
Egyptians believed that the human personality had many facets—a
concept that was probably developed early in the Old Kingdom.
In life, the person was a complete entity, but if he had led a
virtuous life, he could also have access to a multiplicity of
forms that could be used in the next world. In some instances,
these forms could be employed to help those whom the deceased
wished to support or, alternately, to take revenge on his enemies.
Khet
(physical) :
![](576px-Ushabti_box_REM_RC_623_2.jpg)
An
ushabti box, Ptolemaic Period. On display at the Rosicrucian Egyptian
Museum in San Jose, California. RC 623
The ht (Egyptological spelling: khet), or physical form, had to
exist for the soul (k/b) to have intelligence or the chance to
be judged by the guardians of the underworld. Therefore, it was
necessary for the body to be preserved as efficiently and completely
as possible and for the burial chamber to be as personalized as
it could be, with paintings and statuary showing scenes and triumphs
from the deceased's life. In the Old Kingdom, only the pharaoh
was granted mummification and, thus, a chance at an eternal and
fulfilling afterlife. However, by the Middle Kingdom, all dead
were afforded the opportunity. Herodotus, an ancient Greek scholar,
observed that grieving families were given a choice as to the
type and or quality of the mummification they preferred: "The
best and most expensive kind is said to represent [Osiris], the
next best is somewhat inferior and cheaper, while the third is
cheapest of all."
Because
the state of the body was tied so closely with the quality of
the afterlife, by the time of the Middle Kingdom, not only were
the burial chambers painted with depictions of favourite pastimes
and great accomplishments of the dead, but there were also small
figurines (ushabtis) of servants, slaves, and guards (and, in
some cases beloved pets) included in the tombs, to serve the deceased
in the afterlife. However, an eternal existence in the afterlife
was, by no means, assured.
Before
a person could be judged by the gods, they had to be "awakened"
through a series of funerary rites designed to reanimate their
mummified remains in the afterlife. The main ceremony, the opening
of the mouth ceremony, is best depicted within Pharaoh Seti I's
tomb. All along the walls and statuary inside the tomb are reliefs
and paintings of priests performing the sacred rituals and, below
the painted images, the text of the liturgy for opening of the
mouth can be found. This ritual which, presumably, would have
been performed during interment, was meant to reanimate each section
of the body: brain, head, limbs, etc. so that the spiritual body
would be able to move in the afterlife.
Sah
(spiritual body) :
![](Ostrakon_Ghost_story_Turin.JPG)
Ostrakon
with the beginning of the Ghost story. Terracotta from Deir el-Medina,
19th–20th Dynasties, New Kingdom of Egypt. Found by Ernesto
Schiaparelli in 1905. Museo Egizio, S.6619
If all the rites, ceremonies, and preservation rituals for the
ht were observed correctly, and the deceased was found worthy
(by Osiris and the gods of the underworld) of passing through
into the afterlife, the sh (sah; spiritual representation of the
physical body) forms. This spiritual body was then able to interact
with the many entities extant in the afterlife. As a part of the
larger construct, the h, the sh was sometimes seen as an avenging
spirit which would return from the underworld to seek revenge
on those who had wronged the spirit in life. A well-known example
was found in a tomb from the Middle Kingdom in which a man leaves
a letter to his late wife who, it can be supposed, is haunting
him :
What
wicked thing have I done to thee that I should have come to this
evil pass? What have I done to thee? But what thou hast done to
me is to have laid hands on me although I had nothing wicked to
thee. From the time I lived with thee as thy husband down to today,
what have I done to thee that I need hide? When thou didst sicken
of the illness which thou hadst, I caused a master-physician to
be fetched ... I spent eight months without eating and drinking
like a man. I wept exceedingly together with my household in front
of my street-quarter. I gave linen clothes to wrap thee and left
no benefit undone that had to be performed for thee. And now,
behold, I have spent three years alone without entering into a
house, though it is not right that one like me should have to
do it. This have I done for thy sake. But, behold, thou dost not
know good from bad.
Ib
(heart) :
jb (F34) "heart"
Egyptian hieroglyphs
![](640px-Hatnofer%27s_heart_scarab.jpg)
This
exquisite gold and green stone heart scarab belonged to Hatnofer,
the mother of the prominent 18th dynasty state official Senenmut,
who served under the female king and pharaoh Hatshepsut. The tomb
of Ramose and Hatnofer was found intact by archaeologists at Sheikh
Abd el-Qurna, in Thebes. The scarab is today on display at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
An important part of the Egyptian soul was thought to be the jb
(ib), or heart. The heart was believed to be formed from one drop
of blood from the heart of the child's mother, taken at conception.
[citation needed] To ancient Egyptians, the heart was the seat
of emotion, thought, will and intention, evidenced by the many
expressions in the Egyptian language which incorporate the word
jb. Unlike in English, when ancient Egyptians referenced the jb
they generally meant the physical heart as opposed to a metaphorical
heart. However, ancient Egyptians usually made no distinction
between the mind and the heart with regard to emotion or thought.
The two were synonymous.
In
the Egyptian religion, the heart was the key to the afterlife.
It was essential to surviving death in the nether world, where
it gave evidence for, or against, its possessor. Like the physical
body (ht), the heart was a necessary part of judgement in the
afterlife and it was to be carefully preserved and stored within
the mummified body with a heart scarab carefully secured to the
body above it to prevent it from telling tales. According to the
text of the Books of Breathing :
[They
drag Osiris in]to the Pool of Khonsu, ... and likewise [the Osirism
Hor, justified] born of Taikhebyt, justified ... after he has
grasped his heart. They bury ... the Book of Breathings which
[Isis] made, which ... is written on both its inside and outside,
(wrapped) in royal linen, and it is placed [under] the ... left
arm near his heart.
It
was thought that the heart was examined by Anubis and the deities
during the Weighing of the Heart ceremony. If the heart weighed
more than the feather of Maat, it was immediately consumed by
the monster Ammit, and the soul became eternally restless.
Ka (vital essence) :
![](hiero_D28.png)
k (D28)
Egyptian hieroglyphs
The k (ka) was the Egyptian concept of vital essence, which distinguishes
the difference between a living and a dead person, with death
occurring when the k left the body. The Egyptians believed that
Khnum created the bodies of children on a potter's wheel and inserted
them into their mothers' bodies. Depending on the region, Egyptians
believed that Heqet or Meskhenet was the creator of each person's
k, breathing it into them at the instant of their birth as the
part of their soul that made them be alive. This resembles the
concept of spirit in other religions.
The
Egyptians also believed that the k was sustained through food
and drink. For this reason food and drink offerings were presented
to the dead, although it was the k within the offerings that was
consumed, not the physical aspect. In the Middle kingdom a form
of offering tray known as a soul house was developed to facilitate
this. The k was often represented in Egyptian iconography as a
second image of the king, leading earlier works to attempt to
translate k as double.
In
the Old Kingdom private tombs, artwork depicted a "doubleworld"
with essential people and objects for the owner of the ka. As
Ancient Orient Curator Andrey Bolshakov explains: "The notion
of the ka was a dominating concept of the next life in the Old
Kingdom. In a less pure form, it lived into the Middle Kingdom,
and lost much of its importance in the New Kingdom, although the
ka always remained the recipient of offerings."
Ba
(personality) :
![](475px-Ba_bird.svg.png)
B
takes the form of a bird with a human head
![](640px-Egyptian_-_Ba_Bird_-_Walters_571472.jpg)
This
golden b amulet from the Ptolemaic Kingdom would have been worn
as an apotropaic device. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
![](hiero_G29.png)
b (G29)
Egyptian hieroglyphs
![](hiero_G53.png)
b
(G53)
Egyptian hieroglyphs
The b (Egyptological pronunciation: ba) was everything that makes
an individual unique, similar to the notion of 'personality'.
In this sense, inanimate objects could also have a b, a unique
character, and indeed Old Kingdom pyramids often were called the
b of their owner. The b is an aspect of a person that the Egyptians
believed would live after the body died, and it is sometimes depicted
as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the
k in the afterlife.
In
the Coffin Texts, one form of the b that comes into existence
after death is corporeal—eating, drinking and copulating.
Egyptologist Louis Vico abkar argues that the b is not merely
a part of the person but is the person himself, unlike the soul
in Greek, or late Judaic, Christian or Muslim thought. The idea
of a purely immaterial existence was so foreign to Egyptian thought
that when Christianity spread in Egypt, they borrowed the Greek
word psyche to describe the concept of soul instead of the term
b. abkar concludes that so particular was the concept of
the b to ancient Egyptian thought that it ought not to be translated
but instead the concept be footnoted or parenthetically explained
as one of the modes of existence for a person.
In
another mode of existence the b of the deceased is depicted in
the Book of the Dead returning to the mummy and participating
in life outside the tomb in non-corporeal form, echoing the solar
theology of Ra uniting with Osiris each night.
The
word bw (baw), plural of the word b, meant something similar to
"impressiveness", "power", and "reputation",
particularly of a deity. When a deity intervened in human affairs,
it was said that the bw of the deity were at work.
Shut
(shadow) :
A person's shadow or silhouette, šwt (shut), is always present.
Because of this, Egyptians surmised that a shadow contains something
of the person it represents. Through this association, statues
of people and deities were sometimes referred to as shadows.
The
shadow was also representative to Egyptians of a figure of death,
or servant of Anubis, and was depicted graphically as a small
human figure painted completely black. In some cases the šwt
represented the impact a person had on the earth. Sometimes people
(usually pharaohs) had a shadow box in which part of their šwt
was stored.
In
a commentary to The Egyptian Book of the Dead (BD), Egyptologist
Ogden Goelet, Jr. discusses the forms of the shadow: "In
many BD papyri and tombs the deceased is depicted emerging from
the tomb by day in shadow form, a thin, black, featureless silhouette
of a person. The person in this form is, as we would put it, a
mere shadow of his former existence, yet nonetheless still existing.
Another form the shadow assumes in the BD, especially in connection
with gods, is an ostrich-feather sun-shade, an object which would
create a shadow."
Sekhem
(form) :
Little is known about the Egyptian interpretation of this portion
of the soul. Many scholars define shm (sekhem) as the living force
or life-force of the soul which exists in the afterlife after
all judgement has been passed. However, shm is also defined in
a Book of the Dead as the "power" and as a place within
which Horus and Osiris dwell in the underworld.
Ren
(name) :
As a part of the soul, a person's rn ('name') was given to them
at birth and the Egyptians believed that it would live for as
long as that name was spoken, which explains why efforts were
made to protect it and the practice of placing it in numerous
writings. It is a person's identity, their experiences, and their
entire life's worth of memories. For example, part of the Books
of Breathing, a derivative of the Book of the Dead, was a means
to ensure the survival of the name. A cartouche often was used
to surround the name and protect it. Conversely, the names of
deceased enemies of the state, such as Akhenaten, were hacked
out of monuments in a form of damnatio memoriae. Sometimes, however,
they were removed in order to make room for the economical insertion
of the name of a successor, without having to build another monument.
The greater the number of places a name was used, the greater
the possibility it would survive to be read and spoken.
Akh
(intellect) :
![](530px-Akh_glyph.svg.png)
h
glyph
The h "(magically) effective one" was a concept of the
dead that varied over the long history of ancient Egyptian belief.
Relative to the afterlife, akh represented the deceased, who was
transfigured and often identified with light.
It
was associated with thought, but not as an action of the mind;
rather, it was intellect as a living entity. The h also played
a role in the afterlife. Following the death of the ht (physical
body), the b and k were reunited to reanimate the h. [full citation
needed] The reanimation of the h was only possible if the proper
funeral rites were executed and followed by constant offerings.
The ritual was termed s-h "make (a dead person) into an (living)
h". In this sense, it even developed into a sort of ghost
or roaming dead being (when the tomb was not in order any more)
during the Twentieth Dynasty. An h could do either harm or good
to persons still living, depending on the circumstances, causing
e.g., nightmares, feelings of guilt, sickness, etc. It could be
invoked by prayers or written letters left in the tomb's offering
chapel also in order to help living family members, e.g., by intervening
in disputes, by making an appeal to other dead persons or deities
with any authority to influence things on earth for the better,
but also to inflict punishments.
The
separation of h and the unification of k and b were brought about
after death by having the proper offerings made and knowing the
proper, efficacious spell, but there was an attendant risk of
dying again. Egyptian funerary literature (such as the Coffin
Texts and the Book of the Dead) were intended to aid the deceased
in "not dying a second time" and to aid in becoming
an h.
Relationships
:
Ancient Egyptians believed that death occurs when a person's k
leaves the body. Ceremonies conducted by priests after death,
including the "opening of the mouth (wp r)", aimed not
only to restore a person's physical abilities in death, but also
to release a Ba's attachment to the body. This allowed the b to
be united with the k in the afterlife, creating an entity known
as an h.
Egyptians
conceived of an afterlife as quite similar to normal physical
existence – but with a difference. The model for this new
existence was the journey of the Sun. At night the Sun descended
into the Duat or "underworld". Eventually the Sun meets
the body of the mummified Osiris. Osiris and the Sun, re-energized
by each other, rise to new life for another day. For the deceased,
their body and their tomb were their personal Osiris and a personal
Duat. For this reason they are often addressed as "Osiris".
For this process to work, some sort of bodily preservation was
required, to allow the b to return during the night, and to rise
to new life in the morning. However, the complete hs were also
thought to appear as stars. Until the Late Period, non-royal Egyptians
did not expect to unite with the Sun deity, it being reserved
for the royals.
The
Book of the Dead, the collection of spells which aided a person
in the afterlife, had the Egyptian name of the Book of going forth
by day. They helped people avoid the perils of the afterlife and
also aided their existence, containing spells to ensure "not
dying a second time in the underworld", and to "grant
memory always" to a person. In the Egyptian religion it was
possible to die in the afterlife and this death was permanent.
The
tomb of Paheri, an Eighteenth Dynasty nomarch of Nekhen, has an
eloquent description of this existence, and is translated by James
Peter Allen as :
Your
life happening again, without your ba being kept away from your
divine corpse, with your ba being together with the akh ... You
shall emerge each day and return each evening. A lamp will be
lit for you in the night until the sunlight shines forth on your
breast. You shall be told: "Welcome, welcome, into this your
house of the living!"
Source
:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Ancient_Egyptian_conception_of_the_soul