The Journey of the Soul in Ancient Egypt
The Egyptians did not believe that the afterlife was a single, undifferentiated state. They believed that the dead underwent a long, complex, and dangerous journey, beginning at the moment of death and ending in the eternal fields of Aaru. The journey was mapped in the funerary literature (the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, the Amduat, the Book of Gates, and the Book of the Dead), and it required the deceased to navigate a series of trials, judgments, and transformations.
Understanding this journey is essential to understanding Egyptian funerary religion. The tomb, the mummy, the offering, and the spell were all designed to ensure that the deceased could pass safely through the dangers of the night and emerge into the light of the eternal day.
The Components of the Soul
Before the journey could begin, the deceased had to possess a complete soul. The Egyptians described the soul as a compound of several distinct elements, the most important of which were the Ka, Ba, and Akh.
The Ka was the life-force, the vital energy that animated the body. It was often depicted as a pair of raised arms or as a duplicate of the deceased. The Ka depended on the body for its dwelling and on offerings for its sustenance. It was the Ka that the offering formula was meant to nourish.
The Ba was the mobile aspect of the soul, often depicted as a human-headed bird. The Ba could leave the body and travel, but it was tied to the body by affection and by need. Each night, the Ba returned to the mummy to rest; each day, it left the tomb to move among the living.
The Akh was the transfigured, effective spirit. A person became an Akh after death, through the proper rituals and the successful passage of the judgment. The Akh was the form of the soul that could dwell among the stars, communicate with the gods, and intervene in the world of the living.
The full treatment of these three components is given in Ka, Ba, and Akh: the three parts of the Egyptian soul.
The Moment of Death
Death, for the Egyptians, was not the same as the end. The body might lie still, but the soul had simply departed to begin a new mode of existence. The moment of death was marked by rituals: the body was prepared for mummification, and the funeral rites were begun.
The Egyptians believed that the precise manner of death mattered. A person who died a natural death, after a long life, and was properly mummified and buried, was in the best possible position for the afterlife. A person who drowned or was struck by lightening was protected by the gods. A person who was improperly buried, or who had no tomb at all, was in the worst possible position. The Egyptians went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that every member of their family had a proper burial.
The Opening of the Mouth
Before the deceased could begin the journey, the Opening of the Mouth ceremony was performed. The ceremony, depicted in countless tomb paintings, involved a priest touching the mummy’s mouth with a small adze, while reciting spells that restored the deceased’s senses and ability to speak.
The Opening of the Mouth was a necessary act. Without it, the deceased could not eat, drink, speak, or breathe. The ceremony also served as a symbolic rebirth: the mummy’s mouth, opened by the adze, was identified with the mouth of the infant sun emerging from the lotus of creation. The deceased was thus reconstituted as a complete person, ready for the journey ahead.
The Duat: The Underworld
The Egyptian underworld was called the Duat. It was conceived as a region beneath the earth, traversed each night by the sun, and populated by gods, demons, and the dead. The Duat was a place of danger, judgment, and transformation. The souls of the dead had to navigate it carefully, and they required the spells and images of the funerary literature to do so.
The Amduat, “that which is in the underworld,” is the oldest and most extensive of the funerary compositions. It describes the twelve hours of the night, each corresponding to a region of the Duat. The sun, in the form of Ra, travels through these regions in a solar barque, defeating the forces of chaos and regenerating himself. The deceased, identified with Ra, travels with him. The complete account of this journey is given in Ra’s journey through the Duat.
The Book of Gates
A related composition, the Book of Gates, describes the Duat as a series of gates, each guarded by a fearsome deity. The deceased had to know the names of the guardians and the spells to pass them. The Book of Gates is one of the most important sources for the iconography of the underworld, and it appears on the walls of many royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
The Book of Gates has twelve gates in its New Kingdom recension, each guarded by a fearsome deity. Each gate represents a different hour of the night and a different aspect of the underworld. The guardians include serpents, jackals, and human-headed deities. To pass each gate, the deceased had to demonstrate purity and knowledge: reciting the right spell, knowing the right name, performing the right gesture.
The Enemies of the Sun
The most dangerous enemy of the soul was the serpent Apep, the embodiment of chaos. Apep lay in wait for the sun in the deepest part of the Duat, and each night the sun had to defeat him to ensure that the world would continue to exist. The deceased, traveling with the sun, participated in this battle. Spells in the Book of the Dead and the Amduat describe how to assist Ra in the defeat of Apep, by reciting the right words and making the right gestures.
The presence of Apep explains why the funerary literature is so detailed and repetitive. The deceased had to know the exact spells for each stage of the journey, and any mistake could be fatal. The Egyptians did not trust to improvisation; they had the spells inscribed on the walls of the tomb and on papyri placed in the coffin.
The Judgment of the Dead
After passing through the gates of the Duat, the deceased arrived at the Hall of Ma’at, where the weighing of the heart took place. The heart, the seat of the deceased’s moral character, was placed on a balance against the feather of Ma’at. If the heart was lighter than the feather, the deceased was declared “true of voice” and allowed to pass. If it was heavier, it was devoured by Ammit, the devourer, and the soul was annihilated.
The judgment was supervised by Osiris, the lord of the dead, and was conducted by Anubis, the god of embalming. The verdict was recorded by Thoth, the god of writing. Forty-two assessor gods listened to the deceased’s declarations of innocence, the so-called “Negative Confession,” a liturgy recorded in Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead.
The complete account of the judgment is given in the weighing of the heart: judgment in the Hall of Ma’at.
The Book of the Dead
The most familiar of the funerary compositions is the Book of the Dead, a collection of spells that the deceased was expected to know. The Book of the Dead is not a single text but a corpus of more than 190 individual spells, each dealing with a different aspect of the afterlife.
The spells include instructions for opening the mouth of the deceased, for passing the gates of the underworld, for transforming into different forms (a falcon, a lotus, a phoenix), and for protecting the body from snakes and scorpions. Some spells are short, a few words; others are long, with detailed vignettes showing the deceased in the presence of the gods. The spells were inscribed on papyri and placed in the coffin, or carved on the walls of the tomb.
The Book of the Dead represents the final form of a much older tradition. The Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom were carved on the walls of the royal pyramids; the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom were inscribed on the coffins of officials; the Book of the Dead of the New Kingdom and later was the most accessible form of the funerary literature, available to anyone who could afford it.
The Reward: The Fields of Aaru
Those who passed the judgment were admitted to the Aaru, the reed fields of eternal reward. The Aaru was conceived as a mirror image of the Nile Valley, with its own river, its own fields, and its own towns. The deceased would live there forever, free from sickness, hunger, and sorrow, in the company of the gods.
The Egyptian vision of the afterlife was not abstract. The deceased was expected to continue doing the things that had occupied them in life: farming, hunting, fishing, sailing, making offerings to the gods. The fields of Aaru were not a place of rest but a place of eternal, productive activity. The tomb paintings of the New Kingdom often depict the deceased engaged in these activities, as if to ensure that they would continue in the next world.
The Importance of the Name
The name was an essential part of the person. To know someone’s name was to have power over them; to destroy someone’s name was to annihilate their existence in the afterlife. The Egyptians were meticulous about preserving names on coffins, on statues, on tomb walls, and on offering tables. The cartouche of the king was placed on the temple walls, and the names of the gods were written in every formula.
The preservation of the name is one of the reasons Egyptian funerary practice was so elaborate. A person whose name was forgotten could not be remembered, could not receive offerings, and could not continue in the afterlife. The Egyptians therefore went to great lengths to ensure that the name of the deceased would be spoken and read for as long as possible after death.
The Solar Journey as Model
Throughout the funerary literature, the deceased is identified with the sun. The journey of Ra through the Duat is a model for the journey of every soul. The deceased travels with Ra, shares in his victory over Apep, and emerges with him at the eastern horizon as the sun rises.
This identification explains the central importance of solar imagery in the tomb. The walls of the New Kingdom royal tombs are covered with images of the sun, of the barque of Ra, and of the gods of the night sky. The ceiling of the tomb is often a star map, and the deceased is shown rising to join the imperishable stars, the circumpolar stars that never set, which were thought to be the souls of the gods.
The Soul in the Modern Imagination
The Egyptian vision of the soul has had a profound effect on modern thought. The Book of the Dead, translated in the nineteenth century, helped shape the modern spiritualist imagination. The image of the soul journeying through the underworld became a central trope in modern fantasy, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead translations to contemporary novels and films. The Egyptian conception of the soul as a compound of several elements (body, name, shadow, Ka, Ba, Akh) has also been compared to modern psychological theories of the self.
The pages gathered under this section describe the components of the soul, the journey through the Duat, the judgment of the dead, and the various texts and rituals that made the journey possible. Together they offer a picture of one of the most elaborate and sustained attempts in human history to imagine what happens after death.