page_title: Ancient Egyptian conception of the soul
section_title: Sah (spiritual body)
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Egyptian conception of the soul / Sah (spiritual body)
caption_attribution_description: English: Ancient Egyptian ostrakon with the beginning of the Ghost story. Terracotta from Deir el-Medina, 19-20th Dynasty, New Kingdom. Found by Schiaparelli in 1905. Turin, Museo Egizio, S.6619.
context_page_description: The ancient Egyptians believed that a soul was made up of many parts. In addition to these components of the soul, there was the human body.
  According to ancient Egyptian creation myths, the god Atum created the world out of chaos, utilizing his own magic. Because the earth was created with magic, Egyptians believed that the world was imbued with magic and so was every living thing upon it. When humans were created, that magic took the form of the soul, an eternal force which resided in and with every human being. The concept of the soul and the parts which encompass it has varied from the Old Kingdom to the New Kingdom, at times changing from one dynasty to another, from five parts to more. Most ancient Egyptian funerary texts reference numerous parts of the soul: the ẖt "physical body", the sꜥḥ "spiritual body", the rn "name, identity", the bꜣ "personality", the kꜣ "double", the jb "heart", the šwt "shadow", the sḫm "power, form", and the ꜣḫ, the combined spirits of a dead person that has successfully completed its transition to the afterlife. Rosalie David, an Egyptologist at the University of Manchester, explains the many facets of the soul as follows:
context_section_description: If all the rites, ceremonies, and preservation rituals for the ẖt were observed correctly, and the deceased was found worthy (by Osiris and the gods of the underworld) of passing through into the afterlife, the sꜥḥ (sah; spiritual representation of the physical body) forms. This spiritual body was then able to interact with the many entities extant in the afterlife. As a part of the larger construct, the ꜣḫ, the sꜥḥ was sometimes seen as an avenging spirit which would return from the underworld to seek revenge on those who had wronged the spirit in life. A well-known example was found in a tomb from the Middle Kingdom in which a man leaves a letter to his late wife who, it can be supposed, is haunting him:
  What wicked thing have I done to thee that I should have come to this evil pass? What have I done to thee? But what thou hast done to me is to have laid hands on me although I had nothing wicked to thee. From the time I lived with thee as thy husband down to today, what have I done to thee that I need hide? When thou didst sicken of the illness which thou hadst, I caused a master-physician to be fetched…I spent eight months without eating and drinking like a man. I wept exceedingly together with my household in front of my street-quarter. I gave linen clothes to wrap thee and left no benefit undone that had to be performed for thee. And now, behold, I have spent three years alone without entering into a house, though it is not right that one like me should have to do it. This have I done for thy sake. But, behold, thou dost not know good from bad.
caption: Ostrakon with the beginning of the Ghost story. Terracotta from Deir el-Medina, 19th–20th Dynasties, New Kingdom of Egypt. Found by Ernesto Schiaparelli in 1905. Museo Egizio, S.6619.
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