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1I took interest in the Egyptian rendition of the afterlife
2recently.
3
4### Parts of the Soul
5
6Ancient Egyptians believed that the soul comprised of
7several components:
8
9- _ren_
10- _ka_
11- _ib_
12- _ba_
13- _sheut_
14
15
16Egyptians emphasized on preserving the different parts of
17the soul. Mummification for example, served to preserve the
18physical part of the soul. The other components have their
19respective preservation strategies.
20
21Of all of these bits, I find _ren_, which simply means
22_name_, to be the most interesting. _Ba_, the human-headed
23chicken that represents _personality_, is a close favourite.
24
25_Ren_ is the name given to a person at birth. Egyptians
26believed that this portion of the soul would continue to
27live on for as long as it was spoken. If you were someone
28worthy of continued existence, your name would be inscribed
29all over the place. If you were the type to snatch away
30bread from children, your name would be condemned from
31memory, forgotten.
32
33### Garbage-collection
34
35The concept of _ren_ seems to be perfectly analogous to
36reference 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
44The concept of _ren_ seems to model human-memory. The
45similarity with garbage-collection is now easily explained,
46because garbage-collection models a program's memory.
47
48Perhaps some cheeky Egyptian has attained immortality by
49creating a _ren_-cycle.