Egyptian soul

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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.

[edit] Ib (heart)

jb (F34) "heart" in hieroglyphs

The most important part of the Egyptian soul was thought to be the Ib (jb), or heart. The Ib ^[1][2] or metaphysical heart was believed to be a drop from the heart of the mother of a child at conception ^[3]. Archaeological findings portrayed it as a person who is weighed by the goddess Maàt after death.

To Ancient Egyptians, it was the heart and not the brain that was
the seat of emotion and thought, including the will and intentions. In
Egyptian religion, the heart was the key to the afterlife. It was
conceived as proceeding at death to the future 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. This is 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'.

[edit] Sheut (shadow)

A person's shadow, Sheut (šwt
in Egyptian), was always present. It was believed that a person could
not exist without a shadow, nor a shadow without a person, therefore,
Egyptians surmised that a shadow contained something of the person it
represents. For this reason statues of people and deities were
sometimes referred to as their shadows.

The shadow was represented graphically as a small human figure
painted completely black as well, as a figure of death, or servant of Anubis.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Ba (individual personality)

The ba

bȝ (G29) in hieroglyphs

bȝ (G53) in hieroglyphs

The 'Ba' (b3) is in some regards the closest to the contemporary Western religious notion of a soul,
but it also 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). Like a soul, 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.

In the Coffin Texts one form of the Ba that comes into existence after death is corporeal, eating, drinking and copulating. Louis Zabkar
argued that the Ba is not part of the person but the person himself
unlike the soul in Greek, or late Judaic or Christian 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 Ba. Zabkar concludes
that so peculiar 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.^[4]

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 uniting with
Osiris each night.^[5]

The word 'bau' (b3w), plural of the word ba meant something similar
to 'impressiveness', 'power', and '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]. In this regard, the
ruler was regarded as a 'Ba' of a deity, or one deity was believed to
be the 'Ba' of another.

[edit] Ka (life force)

The Ka (k3) was the Egyptian concept of spiritual
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.

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 (k3w) within the offerings (also known as kau) 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.

[edit] Akh

Akh glyph

The Akh (3ḫ meaning '(magically) effective one'),^[6] 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, the Ba and Ka were
reunited to reanimate the Akh.^[7]
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 well to
persons still living, depending on the circumstances, causing 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.

[edit] Relationships

Part of a series on Ancient Egyptian religion
Main Beliefs Mythology · Soul · Duat · Numerology · Polytheism
Practices Offering formula · Funerals
Deities Amun · Amunet · Anubis · Anuket · Apep · Apis · Aten · Atum · Bastet · Bat · Bes · Four sons of Horus · Geb · Hapy · Hathor · Heka · Heqet · Horus · Isis · Khepri  · Khnum · Khonsu · Kuk · Maahes  · Ma'at · Mafdet · Menhit · Meretseger · Meskhenet · Monthu · Min · Mnevis · Mut · Neith · Nekhbet · Nephthys · Nu · Nut · Osiris · Pakhet · Ptah · Qebui · Ra · Ra-Horakhty · Reshep · Satis · Sekhmet · Seker · Selket · Sobek · Sopdu · Set · Seshat · Shu · Tatenen · Taweret · Tefnut · Thoth · Wadjet · Wadj-wer · Wepwawet · Wosret
Texts Amduat · Books of Breathing · Book of Caverns · Book of the Dead · Book of the Earth · Book of Gates · Book of the Netherworld
Other Atenism · Curse of the Pharaohs
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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 in the
afterlife, creating an entity known as an "Akh" (3ḫ, meaning "effective one").

According to Friedrich Junge, Giacomo Borioni proposes in his work "Der Ka aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht" that the Ka was the self of a human being.

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.^[8] Until the Late Period, non-royal Egyptians did not expect to unite with the sun deity, it being reserved for the royals.^[9]

The Book of the Dead, the collection of spells which aided a person in the afterlife existence, 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.

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!"

[edit] See also

• Seven souls

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Greater Things, Father
2. ^ Britannica, Ib
3. ^ Slider, Ab, Egyptian heart and soul conception
4. ^ "A Study of the Ba Concept In Ancient Egyptian Texts.", p. 162-163, Louis V. Zabkar, University of Chicago Press, 1968
5. ^ "Oxford Guide: The Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology", James P. Allen, p. 28, Berkley, 2003, ISBN 0-425-19096-X
6. ^ Allen, James W.. Middle Egyptian : An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77483-7. 
7. ^ EGYPTOLOGY ONLINE, 2009
8. ^ Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation by Henri Frankfort, p. 100. 2000 edition, first copyright 1948. Google Books preview retrieved January 19, 2008.
9. ^ 26th Dynasty stela description from Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

[edit] References

• Wisner, Kerry E. (2001), The Spiritual Bodies of the Ancient Egyptians, http://www.hwt-hrw.com/Bodies.php, retrieved 2009 

• EGYPTOLOGY ONLINE (2001), The concept of the afterlife, http://www.egyptologyonline.com/the_afterlife.htm, retrieved 2009 

[edit] 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. 161–162.
• 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-Medîna,
  edited by Robert Johannes Demarée and Jacobus Johannes Janssen.
  Egyptologische Uitgaven 1. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije
  Oosten. 1–70.
• Borioni, Giacomo C. 2005. "Der Ka aus religionswissenschaftlicher
  Sicht", Veröffentlichungen der Institute für Afrikanistik und
  Ägyptologie der Universität Wien.
• Burroughs, William S. 1987. "The Western Lands", Viking Press. (fiction).
• Friedman, Florence Margaret Dunn. 1981. On the Meaning of Akh (3ḫ) 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. 47–48.
• Jaynes, Julian. 1976. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Princeton University.
• Žabkar, Louis Vico. 1968. A Study of the Ba Concept in Ancient Egyptian Texts. Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 34. Chicago: University of Chicago Press