Akh

Definition

The akh (Egyptian Ꜣḫ, "effective spirit" or "shining one") is the transfigured, glowing form a person takes after death in Egyptian religion — the part of the self that, once the funeral rites had worked, was understood to live among the imperishable circumpolar stars. The word shares a root with akhu, the Egyptian term for "spirit-light" or "stellar brightness," and pictures the blessed dead as celestial beings in the northern sky. It is distinct from the ka (life-force) and the ba (the mobile part of the soul).

In Tradition

For Wilkinson and Faulkner and in the Pyramid-Texts tradition, the akh is the form the dead person takes after transfiguration, joining the imperishable circumpolar stars (ikhemu-sek) in the northern sky. The Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, about 2400-2300 BCE) supply the standard spells for that stellar transfiguration. Belmonte and Lull keep the link between the akh-state, its destination among the imperishable stars, and the way Old Kingdom royal monuments face the circumpolar sky. Akh names this transformed, shining state — not the soul.

In Practice

The akh is one part of the Egyptian many-part view of the self: the ka (the life-force that animates the body), the ba (the personal soul that can leave it), the akh (the transfigured spirit-light that joins the stars), the shut (shadow), the ren (name), the sekhem (power), and the body. Funerary ritual aimed to turn the corpse-plus-ba into an akh — a change that needed the spells of the Pyramid Texts, mummification to preserve the body for the ka, and a proper offering-cult to keep the dead person among the imperishable stars. The akh-state belongs astronomically to the circumpolar zone, the stars that never set, and it is one root of the Egyptian habit of reading stellar events as the soul's journey through the Duat, the underworld.

Historical Origin

The akh is first attested in the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, about 2400-2300 BCE; standard English translation Faulkner, 1969). The doctrine continues in the Coffin Texts (Middle Kingdom) and Book of the Dead (New Kingdom). Modern study: Wilkinson, Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (2003); Faulkner, Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (1969); Hornung, Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (1999). A separate decan named Akh is attested in the Harkhebi inscription (Ptolemaic, 3rd century BCE; Clagett 1995).

Further Reading

• R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
• Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
• Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife