in the richly textured acceptance of the vital and
active ancestral realm. This entry looks at the
beginnings of the concept in Egypt and its pres-
ence elsewhere in Africa.
Egyptian RootsThe concept of eternal life—that is, living forever—
originated with Africans in the Nile Valley and
spread to other parts of the continent and the
world. Actually, it was believed by the earliest
Africans that death occurred when the life force
left the body. However, all the ceremonies associ-
ated with the funerary care of the corpse ensured
that the person would live forever because the vari-
ous activities of the priests after the person had
died, such as the opening of the mouth (wep r),
sought to restore a person’s connection to the ka
that had left the body at death.
In addition, the ancient Africans believed that
this restoration would lead to the physical attrib-
utes of the person being restored. This could be
done, however, only if the ba’s attachment to the
body was released. Therefore, the union of theka,
the life force that had left the body at death, and
theba, the personality, created an entity referred
to in the literature as theakh, meaning the gen-
uine or effective entity.
To have eternal life,ankh neheh, was to have a
relatively normal existence in the sense that the
eternal life was modeled on the journey of the sun.
One’s tomb represented this personal journey
through theDwat, the underworld, and the meet-
ing with the mummified Ausar. Because the tomb
was also the personalized Dwat, it was here that
the bodily preservation existed that allowed the ba
to return to the body during the night’s journey,
rising again to a new vitality in the morning.
The Book of the Coming Forth by Day and
Going Forth by Night is a collection of formulas
written to express the manner and rites of move-
ment through the perils of eternal life. It is not a
journey without difficulty, but the difficulties can
be overcome if the rituals were used that would
prevent one from a second death in the Dwat.
What one wanted was to have eternal memory as
a function also of eternal life.
In the tomb of the 18th dynasty monarch
Paheri, regional ruler of Nekhen, it is written that
his life was happening again without his ba being
kept from his divine corpse, but being reunited
with the akh and therefore he should rise each day
and return every evening. Indeed, it is said that a
lamp will be lit for him every night until the sun
emerged and lit his breast. It is only then that
Paheri will be told, “Congratulations! You have
entered into your house of the forever living!”African Belief
The idea of life forever permeated the concepts of
African people from the Nile Valley period, so
much so that the divinity of the kingships was
related to the same force. All living force, as
Africans understood it, came from a divine power
that shared this divinity with humans. Each
human born into the world left the realm of the
divine with a small amount of the divine material.
Thus, according to the Akan, human creativity
affects the way the universe is constructed. There
are two aspects to the creation of the universe: one
from the supreme deity and the other from human
beings; therefore, one is natural, whereas the other
is social. It is the responsibility of each person
to safeguard the environment for generations that
will live afterward. Of course, the power that
exists in humans comes from the fact that the
Supreme Being, called Nyame or Nyankopon,
confronted death and overcame death and there-
fore has eternal life that was shared with each
human. Thus, Nyame is indestructible and cannot
be burned; the Supreme Being, according to the
Akan, ishye anhye, unburnable.
Inasmuch as all humans have part of the divine
in them, that is, thekra, this part of the human
will not perish because it is also indestructible.
The expression in the Akan language says it all:
Nipa wu a, na onwuee, meaning when the person
dies the soul is not dead. Of course, there is a fur-
ther understanding in Akan that the soul reincar-
nates when a child is born so that the person’skra
din(or soul name) represents the day of the week
that a particular divinity appears in the physical
world as part of the eternal life.Molefi Kete AsanteSeealsoBurial of the Dead; Death; Rites of Passage;
Rituals248 Eternal Life