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author | Akshay <[email protected]> | 2022-08-02 17:49:41 +0100 |
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committer | Akshay <[email protected]> | 2022-08-02 17:49:41 +0100 |
commit | 9698183d180a470329d77304dc8e87d976fa753d (patch) | |
tree | dbda3b71ec8d1bb499244104719ec9247ff267b4 /posts | |
parent | f8204c2525a070fa0f5abdecece4cf210f21cfb7 (diff) |
new post: a reference counted afterlife
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-rw-r--r-- | posts/a_reference_counted_afterlife.md | 49 |
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1 | I took interest in the Egyptian rendition of the afterlife | ||
2 | recently. | ||
3 | |||
4 | ### Parts of the Soul | ||
5 | |||
6 | Ancient Egyptians believed that the soul comprised of | ||
7 | several components: | ||
8 | |||
9 | - _ren_ | ||
10 | - _ka_ | ||
11 | - _ib_ | ||
12 | - _ba_ | ||
13 | - _sheut_ | ||
14 | |||
15 | |||
16 | Egyptians emphasized on preserving the different parts of | ||
17 | the soul. Mummification for example, served to preserve the | ||
18 | physical part of the soul. The other components have their | ||
19 | respective preservation strategies. | ||
20 | |||
21 | Of all of these bits, I find _ren_, which simply means | ||
22 | _name_, to be the most interesting. _Ba_, the human-headed | ||
23 | chicken that represents _personality_, is a close favourite. | ||
24 | |||
25 | _Ren_ is the name given to a person at birth. Egyptians | ||
26 | believed that this portion of the soul would continue to | ||
27 | live on for as long as it was spoken. If you were someone | ||
28 | worthy of continued existence, your name would be inscribed | ||
29 | all over the place. If you were the type to snatch away | ||
30 | bread from children, your name would be condemned from | ||
31 | memory, forgotten. | ||
32 | |||
33 | ### Garbage-collection | ||
34 | |||
35 | The concept of _ren_ seems to be perfectly analogous to | ||
36 | reference counted garbage-collection. | ||
37 | |||
38 | - A name (_ren_) is assigned to an object (person) on | ||
39 | initialization (at birth) | ||
40 | - Names are used to refer to objects | ||
41 | - Objects go out of existence when there are no more | ||
42 | references to them | ||
43 | |||
44 | The concept of _ren_ seems to model human-memory. The | ||
45 | similarity with garbage-collection is now easily explained, | ||
46 | because garbage-collection models a program's memory. | ||
47 | |||
48 | Perhaps some cheeky Egyptian has attained immortality by | ||
49 | creating a _ren_-cycle. | ||