Guilt and Purification in Ancient Egypt*)

Abstract

The sense of sin and guilt is a human feeling. Nobody escapes from realizing occasionally that he is sinning, by speaking, by performing acts, by nourishing thoughts which are bad. Thereby he incurs guilt. Yet his sense of sin and guilt can vary in strength. In some people, in certain periods and among the adherents of certain religions it is very strong, whilst it is nearly absent in other people and in other periods. Immediately after the Second World War psychiatrists were engaged for a long time in analysing feelings of guilt. No wonder: during that war many people had been forced to perform horrible acts which had violated their conscience. Christianity has always stressed the sense of sin and guilt in order to make man humble and to make him understand the significance of God's forgiveness. The other religions of the world have also nurtured in their followers the sense of their shortcomings. Even among illiterate people the consciousness of sin is not absent. This is proved by the extensive and interesting studies which the late Professor Pettazzoni, the first president of the I.A.H.R. devoted to the confession of sins, especially with illiterate people. 1) Thus, there is every reason to investigate the part played by the sense of sin and guilt in the religions of antiquity, in particular in Ancient Egypt. The first step is to conduct a linguistic inquiry into the Egyptian words which are used to indicate sin and guilt. It appears that the Egyptian language has at its disposal about ten words which can be translated by sin 2) and possesses about six words expressing the idea of guilt. 3) On closer observation it is found that both groups