It had got the head of a man, the deceased, and the body of a bird, with the idea that the ba could flit in and out of the tomb until it was time to resurrect. However, the most important part was the ba which was one’s personality, represented by drawing on tomb walls and in papyri, in Books of the Dead. The Book of the Dead included the head of a man and the body of a bird with an idea that the ba, considered the personality of a person, would fly until its resurrection. One was called the ka, like a physical double, and there could even be a ka statue. The Egyptians believed that a person was made up of many physical parts, but there was also a soul which had lots of different aspects. The best example of ‘Lamentation’, was a papyrus called ‘The Report of a Dispute between a Man and His Ba’. It was a large genre with plenty of papyri, giving an insight into what was going on in the First Intermediate Period. It was where people were complaining, a process known as lamenting. Looking at the fiction written during the next period, the Middle Kingdom, was a body of literature called ‘Lamentations’. (Image: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden/Public domain) Turin PapyrusĪs the Turin Papyrus containing a list of several kings was damaged, turning to literature was considered the way out, even though this was not written during the First Intermediate Period. The Turin Papyrus containing the kings’ list was damaged, so the way out was to look at the fiction written during the Middle Kingdom, called the Lamentations.

Papyrus meaning