The Egyptians could teach us about body and soul
Body and soul hang inseparably together for the ancient Egyptians, who regarded the body as a container for everything from food to the voice, emotion and magic. Danish researcher believes we can learn from their body perception.
The way we think of the body, mind and emotions, is not natural. It depends on when and in which culture, in which we live. Today’s society permeated by the idea that body and mind are two different things, but this has not always been.
The ancient Egyptians is a good example that there are other ways to understand the body than the one we use today. They perceived the body as a container for everything: thoughts, emotions, magic and communication.
Today we can use the Egyptians’ ideas about the relationship between body, mind and emotions to break out of the habit of thinking about our body, which prevents us to solve the problem where it is not possible to distinguish between the body and what we call soul.
It says Rune Nyord, mail. doc. in Egyptology at the Department of Tværkulturelle and Regional Studies at Copenhagen University.
- The body is more than a machine, and it is absolutely essential for us. It is the only contact we have with the real world. The whole foundation of what being human is that we have this body, “says Nyord.
New order has examined what burial texts can tell us about the Egyptians’ notions of the body and not least the body’s functions.
Magic Phrases
The Egyptians believed that man at death went from being a soft, movable, but also perishable nature, to be a hard object, which was cultivated as forfader.
Ancestor’s body was namely important in the Egyptian death cult, where they visited the ancestral grave, gave them food and asked them for advice.
Ancestors were enduring, just like the stars. But in the transition from human to forfader, there was a danger that the body would fall apart, never to be reassembled.
The Egyptians tried to prevent, in part by mumifisere body and partly by magical hieroglyphs were painted on the walls of the burial chamber, or inside the coffin, which sentences would act as a shield, and protect the individual body parts.
When we in our time thinking about feelings and thoughts, we place them an abstract place, which may be about feelings, but not the body.
Egyptians thought, however, was very clear: If you were happy, for example, that a project had gone well, “said Mon heart that was long. Join the other hand, frustrated or sad, was the heart card.
A container of magic, thoughts and communication
These expressions are not far from our contemporary expression to be “heavy heart” or “light of heart.” But the Egyptians regarded the body very concretely as a container and it influenced how they thought of everything from magic to lie.
An example of this is magic that was called “Heka” by the Egyptians.
Magic was considered a beverage. When it was fully into the body, it could be transferred to another when that one was eaten. In the mythological universe, there were examples of a being able to get the magical abilities by eating another creature who had been drinking magic.
- But keep the idea turned out not only in relation to magic, but also in relation to what came out of the body, says Nyord.
When the Egyptians spoke, his speech was literally something that came out of the body. Along the way, it could be distorted – for example, if you lied.
- A due regard for the Egyptians was that it was a physical basis for even such as ideas, knowledge and magic. It is expressed very concrete and physical, that which is in the stomach and exits through the mouth, “says Nyord.
Similarly, eyes acting as a gateway to the body. Visual impressions just came from outside and enter through the eyes, which was an input to the body like mouth, which also had to do with communication.
Therefore, it also entered into a so-called eye-and mouth opening ritual in mumifiseringsprosessen, so that the living could communicate with their ancestors.
Stuck in a world of body and soul
Nyord believe that the Egyptians’ concept of the body as a container can inspire us to break our rigid way of thinking on the body.
He refers to the famous philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961), who criticized us in our modern culture share the world into a physical and a mental / psychological part, which means that there are many things we have difficulty explain, for example, in research that has the brains to do.
Egyptologist says that Merleau-Ponty has inspired later linguists to prove that we actually, in our very abstract thinking, understands our body as a container – just like the ancient Egyptians made very specific.
- There is a basic notion of the Egyptians that appears when working with a lot of body parts, the body acts as a container, said Nyord.
- Mon interested in what’s in the tank, and what’s coming in and out of it. One can explain how this idea has arisen. To survive as a human being, one is the need to go into what’s coming in and out of the body.
