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I took interest in the Egyptian rendition of the afterlife
recently.
### Parts of the Soul
Ancient Egyptians believed that the soul comprised of
several components:
- _ren_
- _ka_
- _ib_
- _ba_
- _sheut_
Egyptians emphasized on preserving the different parts of
the soul. Mummification for example, served to preserve the
physical part of the soul. The other components have their
respective preservation strategies.
Of all of these bits, I find _ren_, which simply means
_name_, to be the most interesting. _Ba_, the human-headed
chicken that represents _personality_, is a close favourite.
_Ren_ is the name given to a person at birth. Egyptians
believed that this portion of the soul would continue to
live on for as long as it was spoken. If you were someone
worthy of continued existence, your name would be inscribed
all over the place. If you were the type to snatch away
bread from children, your name would be condemned from
memory, forgotten.
### Garbage-collection
The concept of _ren_ seems to be perfectly analogous to
reference counted garbage-collection.
- A name (_ren_) is assigned to an object (person) on
initialization (at birth)
- Names are used to refer to objects
- Objects go out of existence when there are no more
references to them
The concept of _ren_ seems to model human-memory. The
similarity with garbage-collection is now easily explained,
because garbage-collection models a program's memory.
Perhaps some cheeky Egyptian has attained immortality by
creating a _ren_-cycle.
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