The Acient 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). Akhenaton (real name Philippe Fragione) is a French rapper and producer of French hip hop. ... This article is about modern humans. ... For other uses, see Soul (disambiguation). ...

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'. A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs. ... This article concerns the military rank of Maat. ... A depiction of PAJARO in a late period papyrus, showing his decorated leonine body, and crocodile head. ... Spoken in: Ancient Egypt Language extinction: evolved into Demotic by 600 BC, into Coptic by AD 200, and was extinct by the 17th century Language family: Afro-Asiatic  Egyptian  Writing system: hieroglyphs, cursive hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic (later, occasionally Arabic script in government translations) Language codes ISO 639-1: none...

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. Shadows on pavement A shadow is a region of darkness where light is blocked. ...

The shadow was represented graphically as a small human figure painted completely black as well, as a figure of death, or servant of Anubis. For other uses, see Anubis (disambiguation). ...

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. For other uses, see Name (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Book of the Dead (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Cartouche (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Akhenaten (disambiguation). ... Tondo of the Severan family, with portraits of Septimius Severus, Julia Domna, Caracalla, and Geta. ...

Ba (individual personality)

The ba

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 is sometimes depicted as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the 'Ka' in the afterlife. A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs. ... A section of the Papyrus of Ani showing cursive hieroglyphs. ... The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – this was the first of three so-called Kingdom periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile... A view of the pyramids at Giza from the plateau to the south of the complex. ...

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 [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.

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. Khnum on the right shown with his consort Menhit on the outside wall at the temple in Esna In Egyptian mythology, Khnum (also spelled Chnum, Knum, or Khnemu) was one of the earliest Egyptian gods, originally the god of the source of the Nile River. ... Classic potters kick-wheel at Erfurt, Germany The potters wheel is a machine used in the shaping of round ceramic wares. ... In Egyptian mythology, Heget (also Heqet, Heka, Heka) was a goddess of death and childbirth, depicted as a frog, a woman with a frogs head, or a frog on the end of a phallus. ... In Egyptian mythology, Mesenet was the goddess of childbirth and fate, and the creator of each childs Ka, or soul. ... For other uses, see Birth (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Spirit (disambiguation). ... This article is about the baked good, for other uses see Pie (disambiguation). ...

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"). For other uses, see Death (disambiguation). ...

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.

Julian Jaynes in his theoretical work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, suggests that the "ka" originally was a hallucinated deity-voice similar to that experienced in schizophrenia. He asserts that most people were not fully conscious in ancient times, and hence his theory is regarded as being on the fringe by the mainstream of researchers into antiquity. Julian Jaynes Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 - November 21, 1997) was an American psychologist, best known for his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), in which he argues that ancient peoples were not conscious as we consider the term today, and that the... The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) is a controversial work of popular psychology by Julian Jaynes in which he proposes that consciousness emerged relatively recently in human history. ...

The soul in Egyptian afterlife concepts

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.^[1] Until the Late Period, non-royal Egyptians did not expect to unite with the sun deity, it being reserved for the royals.^[2] In Egyptian mythology, Duat (also called Akert or Amenthes) is the underworld, where the sun traveled from west to east during the night and where dead souls were judged by Osiris, using a feather, representing Truth. ... For other uses, see Osiris (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Osiris (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Osiris (disambiguation). ...

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. This article is about the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. ...

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: Nekhen (Greek: Hierakonpolis, Arabic: Kom El-Ahmar) was the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt at the end of the Predynastic period ( 3200- 3100 BC.) and probably also during the Early Dynastic Period ( 3100 - 2686 BC). ... James P. Allen is a prolific and famous Egyptologist who has published such books as Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs and The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series). ...

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!"

Notes

1. ^ Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation by Henri Frankfort, p. 100. 2000 edition, first copyright 1948. Google Books preview retrieved January 19, 2008.
2. ^ 26th Dynasty stela description from Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna

References

• 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