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The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba
When
c. 1900 BCE, Middle Kingdom
Where it survives
Papyrus Berlin 3024
What it is
A man weary of life argues with his own ba about whether to die. The ba threatens to abandon him, which would end any hope of an afterlife. The poetry in the middle section, on death as a homecoming and on the loneliness of a man whose reputation stinks, is extraordinary.
Read it with this in mind
It is a literary composition, not a religious text, and it is damaged at both ends so the resolution is uncertain. It is nonetheless the sharpest surviving evidence that Egyptians could doubt the system their funerary literature describes.
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