Last Rites
By ALPER ÖZKAN (MBG/III)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Greetings and salutations! I hope you’ve enjoyed your summer vacations, for I have had none. Since summer has just ended, I’d rather talk about marine life, but this week is to be devoted to history and mythology instead, especially since last week was on biology. I’m quite fortunate, however: I’m on a quest to take a few classes from every department in Bilkent, and this summer this quest has brought me to a very informative class about archeology. And of course, the second thing to come to mind when one thinks of archeology is mummies (the first being Indiana Jones), so mummies this week’s topic will be. As always, I’m writing as a layman, so here’s hoping that I won’t get anything wrong!
The Egyptian understanding of the soul was rather bizarre. Two aspects are well-known: Ba, the unique personality traits of oneself, and Ka, the life-force that separated the living from the dead, a vital component for sustaining life. Upon one’s death, the Ka left the body, and one of the functions of the mummification process was to release the Ba as well, allowing it to unite with the Ka and form a complete soul. This soul would then periodically return to the body, so the body too needed to be intact. This, in turn, led to the rest of the mummification process, and some rather entertaining mishaps on the way (one example is Ramesses II, of whom head fell off by accident during mummification, so the attendants “fixed” the problem by lodging a wooden stake on his chest as a neck support and mounting the head there).
In addition to those, one’s name was also a part of his soul, and it survived only so long as the name was known and spoken. Protecting one’s name thus became a necessity, and names, in particular the birth and throne names of pharaohs, were encircled with cartouches meant to defend them from harm. Incidentally, those cartouches played a vital role in the decoding of the Rosetta Stone: correctly assuming that they denoted names, Thomas Young compared them to the names mentioned in the Greek text to understand a number of the hieroglyphs. Other aspects of the soul included one’s shadow (one is never without his shadow, and every person has his own individual shadow, so one’s shadow could easily be connected to his soul) and his heart.
Speaking of the heart, there’s an important event that involves it in a more physical sense. Even after being mummified properly, one couldn’t freely go on to the afterlife to meet Osiris; he first had to be judged worthy. The judgement took form of his heart (symbolizing the deeds of the deceased in his life) being weighed against an ostrich feather symbolizing Ma’at. If the heart is lighter than the feather, it is judged pure and the soul may pass on. Should the heart be heavier, however, it is promptly thrown to Ammit, a monster who would devour the heart, effectively killing the person a second time and condemning him to wander the earth, restless and miserable for all eternity. Apparently in Egyptian faith, there were things worse than dying just once.
So here we are, at the end of an article supposedly about mummies, with minimal mention of mummies. Anyhow, good luck to you all this year!