2 - Godlike Bodies and Radiant Souls

Summary

Chapter two explores Egyptian conceptions of human nature. I argue that Egyptians viewed the human as embodied space that shared in the divine state even in its natural condition. In Egypt, the cosmos was thought to have emerged out of the deities responsible for creating it. Egyptians embraced a form of panentheism, as deities inhabited every aspect of the cosmos. Having been created from the divine clay of the earth, the human body enjoyed a trace or latent share in the divine. The physical space of the self thus existed in kinship with the material cosmos from which the deities created it. Inside the body, the soul-aspects likewise shared in this state, as these were the same as those of the deities. Just as the deities embodied the elements of the cosmos, sacred temples and ritual images, the divine presence embodied the human self. The self’s divine-human nature took on a new meaning in the context of the pharaoh. While regular humans shared in trace amounts of the divine, the pharaoh enjoyed a far more substantial stake in the divine nature.