Dispute between a man and his Ba


The Dispute between a man and his Ba or The Debate Between a Man and his Soul is an ancient Egyptian text dating to the Middle Kingdom about a man deeply unhappy with his life. It is part of the Wisdom literature and takes the form of a dialogue between a man and his ba. The beginning of the text is missing, there are a number of lacunae, and translation of the remainder is difficult. The only copy to survive, consisting of 155 columns of hieratic writing, is on the recto of Papyrus Berlin 3024. Further fragments were published in 2017.

Synopsis (following the translation of M. Lichtheim)

The man accuses his ba of wanting to desert him, of dragging him towards death before his time. He says that life is too heavy for him to bear, that his heart would come to rest in the West, his name would survive and his body would be protected. He urges his ba to be patient and wait for a son to be born to make the offerings the deceased need in the afterlife. His ba describes the sadness death brings and retorts to the man's complaints about his lack of worth, his being cut off from humanity and the attractiveness of death by exhorting him to embrace life and promises to stay with him.
There appears to be no hint in the text that the man is considering taking his own life, although Pritchard's rendition strongly suggests the opposite.

Form

In the translation of Miriam Lichtheim the text is presented as a mixture of styles: prose, symmetrically structured speech, and lyric poetry.

History

The papyrus was bought by the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius in Egypt in 1843 and is now in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung belonging to the Berlin State Museums.
The first edition was published during 1859, and subsequently numerously translated, with sometimes widely differing interpretation.

Literature