Ancient Egyptian conceptions of the human being and its place in the world

A blog post by Yossra Ibrahim

On May 4th, 2023, the members of the RTG 1876 “Early Concepts of Humans and Nature” met for the first plenary session of the summer semester 2023. During this digital meeting, Dr. Rune Nyord, assistant professor of Egyptian art and archaeology at Emory University, presented his ongoing research on “Ancient Egyptian Conceptions of the Human Being and Its Place in the World.”

Dr Nyord began by highlighting that the aim of his presentation is to focus on approaches and outlining possibilities for future research on this topic. His motivation would ultimately be to approach concepts of humans from a different perspective. Dr Nyord commenced with a literature review, showing that research on this topic started in the mid 19th century and was concerned with aspects of the personality.  Such research focused its efforts on texts attached to the owner e.g., The Book of the Dead (ancient Egyptian funerary text used from the beginning of the New Kingdom, c. 1550 BC). Dr Nyord argued that such texts were not at all well understood. However, these texts were keenly considered by the English Egyptologist, orientalist, and philologist Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge who eventually produced a list of prerequisites or criteria that define a human being. This list was later challenged in 2010 by the Egyptologist James Allen who also considered notions of the heart, shadow, and the body as composite aspects.  Prof. Allen’s work is greatly appreciated since it regarded all elements side by side. 

Figure 1. List compiled by Sir E.A. Wallis Budge.

The conception of the human body according to the ancient Egyptians can also be searched on the most recent AI chatbot ChatGPT, which defines the conceptions of the Ka, the Ba, and the Akh. According to Dr Nyord the main problem is that these definitions and lists are all compiled by modern day scholars of the subject, and in many occasions such lists are far from being inclusive and disregards organs such as the heart that is usually neglected from our modern lists. Furthermore, such configurations always categorise the human elements into physical and non-physical elements. These are the only two categories distinguished by scholars, while in fact the Egyptians recognized several other aspects of the soul that project notions of the physical body. Besides, in several scenarios both the physical and non-physical elements were considered together in ancient Egyptian thought.  Another problem with the former literature is that characterisations are not accurate.  To better illustrate this, the 19th century study of the concept of the Ba contradicts what we see in the primary ancient Egyptian textual sources. Accordingly, Dr Nyord proposes that one has to refer to the primary sources written by the ancient Egyptians themselves in order to explore these notions in better terms. He also proposes that scholars or researchers should not apply a conceptual model but assess ethnographical material first and then derive concepts from these sources. 

Figure 2. Dr Rune Nyord illustrating the problem of modern scholarship.

For the last part of his presentation Dr Nyord gave a case study on the Ka to better illustrate his method and also to share his recent findings. Dr Nyord largely depends on textual sources and tries as much as possible to seek an indigenous understanding of these. For example, the Ka has been understood as a life force, acting as a double, and as a soul-like concept that forms the distinction between the living and the dead. Texts that provide information on the Ka can be found in the Coffin Texts (a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary spells written on coffins beginning in the First Intermediate Period, c. 2100 BC) which gives a sense of the imagined relationship between the Ka and its owner. The texts under reference stress a central notion of the analogous relationship between the person and the Ka, i.e. the Ka is not a component of a person, but the person is a component of the Ka.

Figure 3. The Ka as a larger entity of humans.

“The person is part of the Ka”: this complex concept can be understood according to the Coffin Texts as follows: 

• the Ka determines behaviour and personality.

• a person is constantly shaped by their Ka.

• A person relates to their ancestors.

• The Ka is also concerned with manners.

Figure 4. An extract from the Coffin Texts.

Nyord’s interesting discussion has also yielded several questions and opened the door for a long and fruitful discussion among member of the graduate school. For example, Prof. Jochen Althoff questioned whether body parts are domains of the Aristotelian ideas. Dr Nyord then explained that Aristotle had a cemented distinction between the living and the dead; however, in ancient Egypt a human could become a god upon his death and that one of the aims of the Coffin Texts is to regenerate the body in this cycle.

Another question was raised by Dr Ulrike Steinert regarding the principals that stand for the materiality of the soul in ancient Egypt and what distinguishes one human being from another. Dr Nyord then stressed that there is no physical distinction but on a larger scale it forms a classification, and that the Ka determines behaviour.

The final question was raised by myself, and it questioned the role and importance of the heart and mind in the ancient Egyptian texts. According to Dr Nyord the heart is the seat of agency. On the other hand, decision is a bodily entity that rests inside the belly, the belly in turn is an active organ since it makes one feel and think.  Accordingly, thoughts come from the belly.

To sum up, there are many concepts about the human body and the soul that still need to be investigated. By contemplating ancient Egyptian texts Egyptologists will be able to get better knowledge on the ancient Egyptian conception of the body. Former research has been silent on exploring the role of different body parts and particularly research on the heart is greatly missing. It is the hope of future scholarship to better explore the subject by assessing textual material we have at hand.  Consequently, complex concepts would be better highlighted, and knowledge would be brought to light. But one must not forget that the key to understanding always lies in primary resources. 

Figure 5. Thoughts coming out of the belly.