The ancient Egyptian doctrine of the immortality of the soulWiedemann, Alfred
Religion
The ancient Egyptian doctrine of the immortality of the soul
Wiedemann, Alfred
Eschatology, Egyptian; Immortality
The Egyptians, holding the belief that the statue of a human being
represented and embodied a human KA, concluded that the statues of
the gods represented and embodied divine KAS, and were indeed neither
more nor less than the KAS of the gods. Thus the idea of divinity
became entirely anthropomorphic, and, just as the king built his
temple not to himself but to his Personality, so also sanctuaries were
sometimes dedicated not to a god himself but to his Personality.
For example, the chief temple of Memphis was not for the service of
the god Ptah,—the maker of the world, whom the Greeks compared to
Hephæstos,—but rather for that of his KA. Ptah was not alone among
the gods in this respect. The pyramid texts show that even in the times
of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties Thot, Set, Horus, and other gods were
recognised as having KAS; that is to say, each was supposed to be
possessed of his own Personality in addition to himself.[16] It was
believed that the divine KA, this image which had the greater likeness
to man, stood nearer to man than the god himself, and hence in the case
of votive stelæ dedicated to the incarnation of Ptah in the sacred
Apis-bull of Memphis, prayer for the divine favour and blessings is not
as a rule addressed to the Apis, but to its Ka. It is a very remarkable
fact that in several inscriptions[17] the god Rā is credited with no
less than seven BAS and fourteen KAS, corresponding to the various
qualities or attributes pertaining to his own being, and which he could
communicate to the person of the king; such as: wealth, stability,
majesty, glory, might, victory, creative power, etc.[18]
Thus the apprehension of the KA, of a man’s Personality, as his
_Doppelgänger_, or _Double_, found even in some of the oldest texts,
acquired a far-reaching significance which extended not only to the
doctrine of human immortality but also to the conception of the
relations of gods to men.
As we have already stated, each man had a KA so long as he was alive,
but at his death it left him and led an independent existence. Only
after long wanderings did he meet it again in the world to come, and we
still possess the prayer with which he was to greet it, beginning with
the words, “Hail to thee who wast my KA during life! I come unto thee,”
etc.[19]
[Illustration: Fig.: 5.—SET OF “CANOPIC” VASES.[21]
Ȧmset. Dûamûtef. Hāpi. Qebhsenûf.]
[21] The illustration represents the set of Canopic vases dating from
the Thirtieth Dynasty, made for the priest T’et-bast-auf-ānkh, and
found by Prof. Petrie at _Hawara (Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoë_, p. 9).
They are now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
The lids of such vases represent the four genii of the dead:
Ȧmset, [Illustration: {H}], man-headed;
Dûamûtef, [Illustration: {H}], jackal-headed;
Hāpi, [Illustration: {H}], cynocephalous;
Qebhsenûf, [Illustration: {H}], hawk-headed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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