In ancient Egypt, each person was composed of a series of elements without which life was not possible. Just as today some may claim that we are flesh and spirit, in the land of the Nile we also find different concepts that integrate a whole and that make up both the life of a person and their identity. Next, we will review these elements:
The Name
What for us is a detail of relative importance, for the ancient Egyptians was a fundamental part of their identity and the first element they would receive from birth. The name was not just a way to refer to a specific individual but a vital essence of the person that defined their personality, their future, and that had key importance in post-mortem aspects. For a person to exist, they had to receive a name at birth.
Thus, the name (ren in ancient Egyptian) enjoyed incredible power, being able to make various concepts a reality just by being pronounced or written. The most evident examples of this quality of the name are found in the offering formulas that the deceased inscribed in their tomb to have sustenance in the afterlife. Simply with it being written or with someone reading it turned its content into reality. If an offering was directed at a specific individual, this offering became real because it was written and could be read. This is one of the qualities that written word had in the conception of the Egyptians.
Throughout their life, a person could adopt different names, according to their position in society, as happened with kings or gods. Gods could even have a secret name, as knowing the name of a deity could imply having control over that god. A magnificent example of this is found in the story where the goddess Ast (Isis) manages through deception to discover Ra's secret name, thereby gaining control over him and his power.
The power of a name was such that its removal implied the non-existence of a person. For a king to erase the name of a previous monarch or to replace their name on a statue or relief meant that the first person never existed, is not part of reality since there is no record of their existence, and that the statue or relief of the second individual becomes their own work, regardless of it being from an earlier time, as the mere presence of their name made it a reality.
The Body
One of the parts of the human being, known as Jat. It is perhaps the element that requires the least explanation as it is quite self-explanatory. The body is the physical vessel of the human being, the support in which the rest of the elements that make up the totality of the person reside.
The body is not eternal, therefore it must be preserved after death to ensure the continuity of the human being; without a body, the rest of the elements cannot exist.
A clear example of the disappearance of the deceased, and therefore their non-existence, is that in the judgment where the heart is weighed against a feather, the beast Ammit is responsible for tearing apart the body if the acts of the deceased during their life have not respected Maat, thus denying them eternity and condemning them to eternal oblivion.
The Heart
A dual element because physically it was an inner part of the human body that needed to be preserved after death, for this reason it was not extracted with the viscera, and on the other hand, the element that contained thought, the ability to reason, and a person's intelligence, elements that today we know are functions of the brain, but for the ancient Egyptians resided in this organ, in the same way that today we consider emotions or love as feelings linked to the heart.
A heart-shaped amulet
Because it is the receiver of reason and thought, it is the heart that is placed on the scale in the judgment of the deceased in opposition to the goddess Maat or the feather that represents her. If the heart is lighter, the deceased has passed judgment; if their heart weighs more because they have not lived in Maat, they will be devoured by Ammit, condemning the deceased to disappearance and eternal oblivion, as one cannot live without a heart. For this reason, amulets were placed on the bodies of the deceased, urging the heart not to speak ill of the departed.
The Shadow
Although the name seems completely explanatory and we might equate the concept of shadow in ancient Egypt with our modern one, it is not entirely true. The shadow is an element that is part of the human being, representing a double of oneself and accompanying them during the day.
The shadow is represented as a completely black human figure, but not merely as the silhouette cast by our bodies in the sun's light. This element carries significant funerary importance where there isn't a reflection to cast someone's shadow. Instead, it is like a dark double of a living being that could even accompany the 'ba' when it left the deceased's body.
In life, it was understood that a person's shadow possessed a part of them.
The Ka
The Ka is a concept that has not been perfectly understood or explained because our current beliefs imply that we look for similarities between various concepts that do not exactly correspond to the original meaning of the word. Thus, we often find the ka defined as the soul or spirit of a person, but that is not entirely accurate.
The Ka is more of a life force, an element that enables existence and without which we cannot live. It does not have a physical or incorporeal representation like the Christian soul. Without this life force, this animation, we could not live. Therefore, the god Khnum shapes each individual's ka on his potter's wheel with the aim of being the immaterial double of the body.
The god Khnum shaping on his wheel. Scene from the divine marriage of Amenhotep III. Original drawing by Schwaller de Lubicz.
The way of representing and writing it is like two arms joined at a 45-degree angle that simulate being in a prayer position.
The ka leaves the body after its death, but to be able to survive in the other world, the body cannot continue to exist without this vital force that animates it, so the ka must return to the body to avoid definitive death.
However, the ka could not subsist without food, which is why offerings were often directed to the ka of the person who fed on the energy of these offerings to perpetuate their existence and their bond with the body after death. We have evidence of the figure of a "servant of the ka," who was the person in charge of going to the tomb of the deceased and performing the invocation of the offerings to feed the ka.
It is, as we see, a complex concept and difficult to assimilate for our current beliefs, but something completely logical and normal within the thought system of ancient Egypt. Nevertheless, and to complicate matters further, gods like Ra could have up to 14 ka.
For Faulkner, the ka cannot be defined as a single element but as a multiplicity of them such as soul, spirit, essence, personality, or desire.
To further entangle this concept, just when it seems we are getting a clear understanding, we find some references to the ka that only return us to initial ignorance by not clearly showing what this element refers to. For example, in an inscription found on a stela from the time of King Thutmosis III at Gebel Barkal (Victory Stela), we find the following reference: "I took the southern countries by order of his spirit (written as Ka in the text) and the northerners according to his guidance."
Victory Stele of Thutmose III. Image credits: Museum of Fine Arts Boston https://collections.mfa.org/objects/145121
The Ka in the pyramid texts
In statement 36 we read: "Your purification is the purification of Jer (Horus), your purification is the purification of Suti (Seth), your purification is the purification of Yejuti (Thot), your purification is the purification of Dun-Anuy, your purification is the purification of your ka, your purification is the purification of your purification". Here we see how the ka must be purified as part of a double purification ritual of the king.
In statement 46 we read: "Recite four times: A gift that the king guarantees to the ka of the king". In this formula we find the aforementioned allusion that the ka requires food just like the body and therefore must receive offerings to subsist, if not, it will perish.
Statue of Ka currently in the Egyptian Museum of Cairo. Image from Wikipedia (Jon Bodsworth).
In statement 50, we find a reference that the Ka of the king is the very essence of the king, an inseparable aspect of him: "Oh, Ra! If you rise in the sky, you rise for the king, lord of all things; if all things belong to you, then all things will belong to the Ka of the king."
Finally, as an example, I want to highlight statement 215 that speaks of how the king ascends to heaven as a star and in which it can be read: "Your limbs are the twin sons of Atum, Oh imperishable one. You will not die and your Ka (translated as double by Faulkner) will not die because you are a Ka." Faulkner's translation already directly assimilates this idea of the Ka as a double of the king, but I believe it limits the translation of the term restricting the rest of interpretations and functions that the Ka represents. As we see in this statement, the Ka will live if everything is done correctly because the king will live and the king will live because his Ka will do likewise.
The Ba
It is another concept that is difficult to assimilate and is considered to be akin to personality. It is an element that is tied to the human being and without which one cannot subsist and that, as with the Ka, after the death of the body leaves it but must return to ensure continuity of life in the afterlife. When it leaves the body it does so represented as a bird with the head of the deceased, especially in the New Kingdom appearing in earlier periods more like a stork, when it was shown.
Despite being defined as the personality of the deceased, it was not an element present in life but manifested itself when the body died. The 'ba' was the vessel for the individual's personality as well as for animating it, leaving its body to go to the afterlife. It had to return to it to preserve it, as otherwise, if it did not return, the body would die definitively. For this reason, we find funerary formulas that indicate how to allow the 'ba' to reunite with the body in the afterlife. It is the mobile part of a human being once dead, unlike the 'ka', which must remain attached to the deceased; the 'ba' enjoys freedom of movement.
Representation of the soul (ba) in the scene from the tomb of Irinefer.
The narrative of a desperate man's dialogue with his Ba from the Middle Kingdom, where a man converses with his Ba to prevent his own suicide, is well known.
The Ba in the Pyramid Texts
Just as with the Ka, the Ba is also mentioned in the pyramid texts, and from these, we can attempt to draw a series of conclusions about its nature and functions. For example, in declaration 356 where Jer (Horus) and the king fight against Suti (Seth) with the help of the god Geb we read: "Your son Jer has defeated him, he has snatched his eye and given it to you. You obtain your ba through him, you gain power through him at the head of the spirits. Jer has prepared you to take possession of your enemies and there is none who can escape from you. Jer truly has a ba, and he recognizes his father in you, in your name of ba of king."
In declaration 360 we see how the Ba travels outside the body: "Oh, Nun, let the gates be open for me so that they see I have arrived, a divine ba."
However, the concept becomes ambiguous again in declaration 468 where the Ba seems to be defined more as the concept of soul or spirit that we know: "Oh king, be a ba like the souls of On! Be a ba like the souls of Nejem! Be a ba like the souls of Pe! Be a ba like a living star at the head of its sisters!"
The Aj
Another of the elements that gave shape and meaning to the human being, in this case, the way in which the deceased inhabited the afterlife. It is the most difficult concept to define of all those we have named before and was represented as an ibis.
Contrary to other elements, the Aj only manifests after the death of the body and is inseparably linked to the Ka and Ba. Some have defined it as a union of the ka and ba that gives rise to a new element. It is an element that serves the deceased to ascend to the stars as reflected in the texts of the pyramids of the Old Kingdom, a luminous concept linked to human life in the stars.
Conclusions
We have seen all the elements that make up a human being, or a god, although it is true that several of these concepts such as ka or ba are not entirely clear or, rather, we cannot define them as a single element, reduce them to a simple and understandable explanation for a non-Egyptian mentality. These concepts are many things at once and at the same time are not exclusive among them, something common in Egyptian thought.
Finally, I want to reproduce another fragment of a statement from the pyramid texts, specifically statements 273 and 274 known as "Cannibal Hymn" in which we can read how the king devours the gods, men, and his enemies and obtains their power from them:
"Behold! Their bas are in the belly of the king, their spirits are in the power of the king like leftovers from his meal coming from gods who are cooked by the king from their bones. Behold! Their bas are in possession of the king, their shadows are taken from their owners."
Bibliography:
Camps Vives, Eduard - Pensamiento y religión en el Antiguo Egipto. La historia de un mundo en abstracto. (2014)
Faulkner, R. O. - Diccionario conciso de Egipcio medio (1995)
Jan Nederhof, Mark - Gebel Barkal stela of Tuthmosis III translation (2006)
Nuñez Bascuñan, Rodrigo Andrés - La noción de espacio en el reino antiguo egipcio, a partir de la idea-fuerza del Ka. (2009)
Taber, Gerardo P. - Magina y maldiciones del Egipto faraónico. Concepciones desde la antigüedad hasta el imaginario contemporáneo. Revista Egiptología 2,0 nº4 (2016)
For the pyramid texts: https://www.pyramidtextsonline.com/index.html
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