Ancient Egyptian concept of the soul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Ancient Egyptian concept of the soul
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The ancient Egyptians believed that a human soul was made up of five parts: the Ren, the Ba, the Ka, the Sheut,
and the Ib. In addition to these components of the soul there was the human body (called the ha, occasionally a
plural haw, meaning approximately sum of bodily parts). The other souls were aakhu, khaibut, and khat.
Contents
1 Ib (heart)
2 Sheut (shadow)
3 Ren (name)
4 Ba (personality)
5 Ka (vital spark)
6 Akh
7 Relationships
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 Further reading
Ib (heart)
An important part of the Egyptian soul was thought to be the Ib (jb), or heart. The Ib[1] or
metaphysical heart was believed to be formed from one drop of blood from the child's
mother's heart, taken at conception.[2]
jb (F34) "heart"
To ancient Egyptians, the heart was the seat of emotion, thought, will and intention. This is
in hieroglyphs
evidenced by the many expressions in the Egyptian language which incorporate the word ib,
Awt-ib: happiness (literally, wideness of heart), Xak-ib: estranged (literally, truncated of heart). This word was
transcribed by Wallis Budge as Ab.
In Egyptian religion, the heart was the key to the afterlife. It was conceived as surviving death in the nether
world, where it gave evidence for, or against, its possessor. 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.
Sheut (shadow)
A person's shadow or silhouette, Sheut (wt in Egyptian), 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
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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. Sometimes people (usually pharaohs) had a
shadow box in which part of their Sheut was stored.
Ren (name)
As a part of the soul, a person's ren (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. For example, part of the Book of Breathings, a derivative of the
Book of the Dead, was a means to ensure the survival of the name. A cartouche (magical rope) 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.
Ba (personality)
The 'Ba' (b ) was everything that makes
an individual unique, similar to the
notion of 'personality'. (In this sense,
inanimate objects could also have a 'Ba',
a unique character, and indeed Old
Kingdom pyramids often were called the
'Ba' of their owner). The 'Ba' 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 'Ka' in the afterlife.
Ba takes the form of a bird
with a human head.
This golden Ba amulet from the
Ptolemaic period would have been
worn as an apotropaic device. Walters
Art Museum, Baltimore.
In the Coffin Texts one form of the Ba
that comes into existence after death is corporeal, eating,
drinking and copulating. Louis abkar argued that the Ba is
not 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 and not the term Ba. abkar concludes that so
particular was the concept of Ba 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.[3]
In another mode of existence the Ba of the deceased is depicted in the Book of Going Forth by
Day returning to the mummy and participating in life outside the tomb in non-corporeal form,
echoing the solar theology of Re (or Ra) uniting with Osiris each night.[4]
b (G29)
in hieroglyphs
b (G53)
in hieroglyphs
The word 'bau' (b w), plural of the word ba, meant something similar to 'impressiveness', 'power', and
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'reputation', particularly of a deity. When a deity intervened in human affairs, it was said that the 'Bau' of the
deity were at work [Borghouts 1982].
Ka (vital spark)
The Ka (k ) was the Egyptian concept of vital essence, that which distinguishes the
difference between a living and a dead person, with death occurring when the ka 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
Heket or Meskhenet was the creator of each person's Ka, 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.
k (D28)
in hieroglyphs
The Egyptians also believed that the ka was sustained through food and drink. For this reason food and drink
offerings were presented to the dead, although it was the kau (k w) within the offerings that was consumed, not
the physical aspect. The ka was often represented in Egyptian iconography as a second image of the king,
leading earlier works to attempt to translate ka as double.
Akh
The Akh ( meaning '(magically) effective one'),[5] was a concept of
the dead that varied over the long history of ancient Egyptian belief.
It was associated with thought, but not as an action of the mind; rather, it
was intellect as a living entity. The Akh also played a role in the
afterlife. Following the death of the Khat (physical body), the Ba and Ka
were reunited to reanimate the Akh.[6] The reanimation of the Akh was
only possible if the proper funeral rites were executed and followed by
constant offerings. The ritual was termed: se-akh 'to make (a dead
person) into an (living) akh.' 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 Ramesside Period. An Akh could do either harm or
good to persons still living, depending on the circumstances, causing
Akh glyph
e.g., nightmares, feelings of guilt, sickness, etc. It could be evoked 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 Akh and the unification of Ka and Ba 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 becoming an akh.
Relationships
Ancient Egyptians believed that death occurs when a person's ka 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 Ba to be united with the Ka
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in the afterlife, creating an entity known as an "Akh" ( , meaning "effective one").
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 (the
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 Ba to return during the night, and to rise to new life in the
morning. However, the complete Akhu were also thought to appear as stars.[7] Until the Late Period, non-royal
Egyptians did not expect to unite with the Sun deity, it being reserved for the royals.[8]
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 assure "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 P. 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!"
See also
Afterlife in Ancient Egyptian religion
Ghosts in ancient Egyptian culture
Notes
1. ^ Britannica, Ib (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/280503/ib)
2. ^ Slider, Ab, Egyptian heart and soul conception (http://enc.slider.com/Enc/Ab_(Egyptian_heart-soul_concept))
3. ^ "A Study of the Ba Concept In Ancient Egyptian Texts.", p. 162163, Louis V. abkar, University of Chicago Press,
1968. [1] (http://oi.uchicago.edu/pdf/saoc34.pdf)
4. ^ Oxford Guide: The Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology, James P. Allen, p. 28, Berkley, 2003, ISBN
0-425-19096-X
5. ^ Allen, James W. Middle Egyptian : An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77483-7.
6. ^ EGYPTOLOGY ONLINE, 2009
7. ^ Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation by Henri Frankfort, p. 100. 2000 edition, first copyright 1948. Google
Books preview (http://books.google.com/books?id=vYhfazYeAnUC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&dq=akhu+stars&
source=web&ots=yC2MYRJ8v7&sig=VKFjr2ZmCRVphPM6ahYGwgzfN9Q) retrieved January 19, 2008.
8. ^ 26th Dynasty stela description (http://www.wagenburg.at/staticE/page161.html) from Kunsthistorisches Museum
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Vienna
References
EGYPTOLOGY ONLINE (2001), The concept of the afterlife (http://web.archive.org
/web/20080421124839re_/www.egyptologyonline.com/the_afterlife.htm), archived from the original
(http://www.egyptologyonline.com/the_afterlife.htm) on 2008-04-21, retrieved 2009
Further reading
Allen, James Paul. 2001. "Ba". In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by Donald Bruce
Redford. Vol. 1 of 3 vols. Oxford, New York, and Cairo: Oxford University Press and The American
University in Cairo Press. 161162.
Allen, James P. 2000. "Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs",
Cambridge University Press.
Borghouts, Joris Frans. 1982. "Divine Intervention in Ancient Egypt and Its Manifestation (b3w)". In
Gleanings from Deir el-Medna, edited by Robert Johannes Demare and Jacobus Johannes Janssen.
Egyptologische Uitgaven 1. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten. 170.
Borioni, Giacomo C. 2005. "Der Ka aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht", Verffentlichungen der
Institute fr Afrikanistik und gyptologie der Universitt Wien.
Burroughs, William S. 1987. "The Western Lands", Viking Press. (fiction).
Friedman, Florence Margaret Dunn. 1981. On the Meaning of Akh (3) in Egyptian Mortuary Texts.
Doctoral dissertation; Waltham: Brandeis University, Department of Classical and Oriental Studies.
. 2001. "Akh". In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, edited by Donald Bruce Redford.
Vol. 1 of 3 vols. Oxford, New York, and Cairo: Oxford University Press and The American University in
Cairo Press. 4748.
Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Princeton
University.
abkar, Louis Vico. 1968. A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts. Studies in Ancient
Oriental Civilization 34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
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Categories: Egyptian mythology Ancient Egyptian culture Ancient Egyptian religion
Ancient Egyptian concepts Book of the Dead Vitalism
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