Thursday, April 18, 2024

Christopher B. Hays on "shadow" (šwt) in Egyptian Cosmology

  

The “shadow” (šwt), was portrayed as a black silhouette of the deceased’s earthly form. It was another aspect of the soul that a person sought to free by magical means. Finally, the name (rn) was part of the person’s essence, and having it forgotten or destroyed meant total destruction; and the heart (ib) was the seat of the intellect. (Christopher B. Hays, A Covenant with Death: Death in the Iron Age II and its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2015], 77)