Everything about Egyptian Soul totally explained
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).
Ib (heart)
The most important part of the Egyptian soul was thought to be the
Ib, or heart. 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 heavier than the
feather of Maat, the heart immediately was consumed by the demon
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'.
Sheut (shadow)
A person's
shadow,
Sheut (
šwt in Egyptian), was always present. It was believed that a person couldn't 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.
Ren (name)
As a part of the soul, a person's
name (
ren in
Egyptian) 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 (individual personality)
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 a part of a person that the Egyptians believed would live after the body died, and it's sometimes depicted as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the 'Ka' in the afterlife.
The word 'bau' (plural of the word ba) is based on this concept. It 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 [Borghouts1982]. In this regard, the ruler was regarded as a 'Ba' of a deity, or one deity was believed to be the 'Ba' of another.
Ka (life force)
The
Ka (
k3) was the Egyptian concept of
life force, that which distinguishes the difference between a living and a dead person, 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 women's 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, sharing the
PIE root.
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 often was represented in Egyptian iconography as a second image of the individual, leading earlier works to attempt to translate
ka as
double.
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're 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. Until the Late Period, non-royal Egyptians didn't 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 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!"
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