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Suicide in ancient Egypt
The evidence
There is no direct
archaeological evidence
for suicide in ancient
Egypt nor for any
discriminatory treatment
of people who died at
their own hand;
archaeologists may more
cautiously speak of there
beingfew physical clues
in tombs to treatment o
suicide as
exceptional.[1]
One will
therefore have to rely on
the almost as rare written
records as to incidence
and methods of suicide,
and attitudes towards it.
Historical records
The three millennia long
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history of ancient Egypt
yields records of just a
handful of suicides. In the
aftermath of an
assassination attempt
against Ramses III a
number of the
conspirators, among them
Queen Tiye's son, Prince
Pentawer, were
condemned to death, but,
as a special mark of
leniency, were given the
option to commit suicide.
Persons brought in
because of their crimes
and because of their
collusion with
Pebekkamen, Peyes, and
Pentewere. They were
laced before the nobles
of the court o
examination in order to
examine them; they found
them guilty; they left
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them in their own hands
in the court o
examination; they took
their own lives; and no
unishment was executed
upon them.
The Judicial Turin
Papyrus
Pebes on the other hand
was not condemned to
death for carousing with
women of
the harem accused of
conspiring against the
king. His punishment was
to have his nose and ears
cut off, but he killed
himself, probably unable
to bear his shame:
This great criminal,
Pebes, formerly butler.
This punishment was
executed upon him; he
was left (alone); he took
his own life.
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The Judicial Turin
Papyrus
When with their fall from
power the pride of the
mighty was hurt, they
may have preferred to put
an end to their life and
not suffer further
ignominy. Queen
Cleopatra VII, last of the
Hellenist Ptolemies,
committed suicide in
order not to be shamed in
Octavian's public triumph
in Rome, after she had
lost her bid to keep Egypt
independent.
More is known about
suicide in Graeco-Roman
times than in the
preceding three millennia
of Egyptian history, buteven those records are
scarce. Among them is an
official complaint by the
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relatives of a man driven
to suicide by persecution:
To Apollonios, strategos
of the Arsinoite nome,
rom Pakebkis, son o
Horos, and Kollouthos,
son of P[- - -];[- - -] o
the same village [- - -]
them of false accusations
and assaults in regard to
which each of those who
have suffered wrong has
made his complaint. Even
then the same accused
with his customary
daring attacked another
of the residents of the
same village, Kronion,
son of Petesouchos, who
is also called Chales,
wishing to ruin him by
enalties, so that,
because of his needy
condition, Kronion laid
hands on himself and
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erished. Wherefore,
acting not unwisely,
Petesis, the brother o
Kronion, and Kronion's
own wife, Tephereus,
daughter of Sigeris, laid
the complaint at that time
in accordance with what
they declared to Tiberius
Claudius Chrysermos, the
ormer strategos, about
these occurrences in the
etition. Since, then, the
matter has become
evident from the . . . o
the accused Orses [- - -]
we shall appear as
laintiffs wherever our
lord Gnaeus Vergilius
Capito shall hold the
assizes of the nome to the
end that through his
udgment he (i.e. the
accused) may meet with
the punishment he
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deserves. Farewell.[2]
Of another suicide which
occurred in 173 CE just
the plain facts about how
he died are known, as
the demosios iatros, the
public physician,
Dionysos reported to the
strategos:
Today I was ordered by
tour servant Herakleides
to inspect the dead,
hanged body of Hierax
and to inform you about
the conclusion I would
come to with respect to it.
Therefore I inspected the
body in the personal
resence of the servant in
the home of Epagathos,
son of ...ymeros, son o
Sarapion, in the Broad
Street and I found it
hanged with a noose.
Thus I report.[3]
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Threats of killing oneself
as calls for help were also
made in antiquity. A
woman called Isidora,
worried about the ill
health of her child, wrote
to her husband Hermias:
Do anything, postpone
everything, and come.
referably tomorrow. The
baby is ill. It has become
thin. It is already two
hundred days [since you
went away(?)]. I fear it
will die in your absence.
Know for sure: if it dies
in your absence, be
repared that you do not
ind me hanged.[4]
Literary testimony
Ancient literature, even in
the form of histories,
should not be mistaken
for historical records. It
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can throw light on
attitudes held, it may
repeat historical
memories transmitted by
folk tales or as part of
scribal traditions, but
unless there are
independent
archaeological sources
confirming it, anything
quoted as a fact in such
writings should be taken
with a grain of salt.
Diodorus Siculus
retells the lives of various
ancient kings, among
them one whom he calls
Sesosis, who killed
himself when he became
blind after a long reign:
nd after a reign o
thirty-three years he
deliberately took his own
life, his eyesight having
ailed him; and this act
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won for him the
admiration not only o
the priests of Egypt but o
the other inhabitants as
well, for it was thought
that he had caused the
end of his life to comport
with the loftiness of spirit
shown in his
achievements.
Diodorus
Siculus,Library o
History[5]
Serving a king could lead
even the wise into moral
quandaries, from which
the only exit may have
been death. Josephus
Flavius recounts that
Manetho told a story
about a king by the name
of Amenophis whowanted to see the gods.
The advice of his
counsellor Amenophis,
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son of Paapis, was to
cleanse the country of all
lepers. The king followed
this advice, isolated
80,000 infected persons
in the stone quarries east
of the Nile, where they
had to break stone.
mong them, Manetho
adds, there were some o
the learned priests, who
had been attacked by
leprosy. Then this wise
seer Amenophis was
illed with dread of divine
wrath against himself and
the king if the outrage
done to these persons
should be discovered;
and he added a
rediction that certain
allies would join the
olluted people and
would take possession o
Egypt for 13 years. Not
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venturing to make this
rophecy himself to the
king, he left a full
account of it in writing,
and then took his own
life.
From Josephus, Contra
pionem[6]
In the Tale of Princess
huraNaneferkaptah,
preoccupied with his
quest to retrieve the Book
of Thoth, kills himself
after allowing his wife
Princess Ahura and their
son Merab to drown:
... he said to his heart,
"Shall I not better turn
back again to Koptos,
that I may lie by them?
For if not, when I go
down to Memphis, and
the king asks after his
children, what shall I say
to him? Can I tell him, 'I
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have taken your children
to the Thebaid and killed
them, while I remained
alive, and I have come to
Memphis still alive?' "
Then he made them bring
him a linen cloth o
striped byssus; he made a
band, and bound the book
irmly, and tied it upon
him. Naneferkaptah then
went out of the awning o
the royal boat and fell
into the river. He cried
on Ra; and all those who
were on the bank made
an outcry, saying, "Great
woe! Sad woe! Is he lost,
that good scribe and able
man that has no equal?"
Tale of Princess Ahura[7]
In these tales there is nocondemnation of the act
of suicide as morally
wrong. TheDebate
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between a man tired o
life and his soul is more
critical of it.
Suicide note or
existentialist
treatise: The Debate
between a man tired o
life and his soul?
TheDebate between a
man tired of life and his
soul, the only known
copy of which dates from
the twelfth dynasty, was
composed during a period
when the certainties
about life and its rewards
in an eternal afterlife as
they had come to be
conceived from the end
of the Old Kingdom on,
had given way to
hedonism, to looking for
satisfaction in the here
and nowin the words of
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a Harper's song from the
tomb of King
Antef:Revel in pleasure
while your life endures.
The text is incomplete
and difficult to
understand.[8]
It describes
a man deeply unhappy
with life. He disputes
with his ba who refuses
to acknowledge his
suffering and threatens to
leave him, a frightening
prospect as this would
prevent his resurrection
and a blissful existence in
the beyond. The man
exposes his anxiety and
in the end his ba agrees
to remain with him. He
displays a mental state
characteristic of asuicide: low self-esteem,
self hatred, social
isolation, hope of release
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from suffering by death
and a better life in the
beyond; and it has been
suggested that this might
have been a suicide
note.[9]
Attitudes towards
suicide
Sources about ancient
Egyptian attitudes
towards suicide are few
and ambiguous, which
leads some to call
them varied,[10] similar to
those in ancient Greece
and Rome, changing over
time, from place to
place,[11]
and from person
to person. Some claim
that suicide was seen as a
humane way to escape
intolerable hardship and
depression,[12] while there
are those who think that it
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was forbidden.[13]
The claim has been
made that suicides cut
themselves off from the
gods.[14]
If that had been
so, the peasant in the Tale
of the Eloquent
Peasantwho threatened
to take his complaint
before Anubis, i.e. to
commit suicide and then
askOsiris for justice at
hisJudgment of the
Dead, which might well
have repercussions for a
magistrate refusing to
mete out justice,[15] would
hardly have done so, nor
would the magistrate
have taken the threat
seriously.
The fact that somecondemned conspirators
against Ramses III were
given the option of
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killing themselves, when
others, apparently less
favoured, suffered a
terrible death probably
by impalement which is
thought to have prevented
them from entering
eternal life, may be
considered evidence that
suicides were still able to
enjoy afterlife.[16]
More is known about
the attitudes of the
Hellenists, who came to
dominate Egyptian life
from the third century
BCE onwards. Among
the Greeks there was no
religious law against
suicide, though Aristotle
and Epicurus, in contrastto the Stoics, the Cynics
and the Platonists,
opposed it. But only
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Pythagoreanism held it to
be morally wrong.[17]
The philosopher
Hegesias, who lived in
the third century BCE
seems to have richly
deserved his nickname
Peisithanatos which
means 'Death Persuader.'
He propounded that
human beings were
driven by pleasure and
the avoidance of pain,
and he rejected any
inherent value of such
commonly acknowledged
virtues as friendship,
kindness and
gratitude.[18]
By dying
one did not lose anything
of worth, but rather
gained being free fromevil.[19] According to
Cicero and others
Ptolemy Lagi forbade his
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lectures at Alexandria
after many of his listeners
had committed
suicide.[20]
As Christianity took
hold in Egypt, suicide
became a crime.
Augustine of
Hippo [21] based this view
on the sixth
commandment, "Thou
shalt not kill", which
included oneself.[22]
Incidence and methods
Little is known about the
incidence of suicide
among the upper classes
and practically nothing
about it among the
voiceless masses, but it is
thought to have been
rare.[28]
As to how people
killed themselves, tales
mention a variety of
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methods. Herodotus
retold a story he had
heard about the Ethiopian
queen Nitocris in
hisHistory:
They said that she
(Nitocris) succeeded her
brother; he had been king
of Egypt, and was put to
death by his subjects,
who then placed her upon
the throne. Bent on
avenging his death, she
devised a cunning scheme
by which she destroyed a
vast number o
Egyptians. She
constructed a spacious
underground chamber,
and, on pretence o
inaugurating it, contrived
the following:- Inviting to
a banquet those of the
Egyptians whom she
knew to have had the
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chief share in the murder
of her brother, she
suddenly, as they were
easting, let the river in
upon them by means of a
secret duct of large size.
This and this only did
they tell me of her, except
that, when she had done
as I have said, she threw
herself into an apartment
ull of ashes, that she
might escape the
vengeance whereto she
would otherwise have
been exposed.
Herodotus on Nitocris[23]
Fire is possibly the least
prepossessing way of
killing oneself, though
some of the other
methods mentioned, likethrowing oneself before
crocodiles or drowning
oneself,[28] may be
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scarcely more appealing.
Poison might provide a
way out, as was proven
by Queen Cleopatra, the
popular story being that
she let an asp bite her.[24]
As interesting and
exotic these methods may
have been, research of
records of suicide in the
ancient world concluded
that hanging was
apparently the manner
most frequently
chosen.[25]
Reasons for suicide
Under the first dynasty
high officials were
apparently sacrificed
upon their king's death, at
first by the hundreds.
Under the last kings of
the dynasty the number
of sacrifices was down to
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about a tenth and later the
custom disappeared
completely.[26] It has been
suggested that these royal
servants were forced into
self-immolation,[27] in
order to serve the king in
the hereafter. Similarly,
the conspirators against
Ramses III committed
suicide because they did
not have much of a
choice, the alternative
being a good deal worse.
Then as now
depression was probably
the most important cause
for suicide. The
composer of
theDebate shows many
of its signs in his work,
and some followers ofHegesias must have felt
the absence of purpose in
their existence deeply to
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end their lives. Whether
some people despaired of
the state of Egyptian
society after the collapse
of the Old Kingdom to
such an extent, that they
killed themselves as some
suggest,[29]
cannot be
verified.
Bibliography:
Albert I. Baumgarten,
Jan Assmann,
Gedaliahu A. G.Stroumsa (eds.), Self,
soul, and body in
religious experience,
Brill, 1998
Paul Carrick,Medical
Ethics in the AncientWorld, Georgetown
University Press, 2001
John R. Catan,A
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History of Ancient
Philosophy: The
systems of the
Hellenistic Age, SUNY
Press, 1985
Frederick Charles
Copleston,A history o
hilosophy, Continuum
International
Publishing Group,
2003
Diodorus Siculus, The
Library of History,
vol.1, Loeb Classical
Library edition, 1933
Eleanor Goltz
Huzar,Mark Antony, a
biography, U of
Minnesota Press, 1978
Pamela Rae Heath, Jon
Klimo, Suicide: what
really happens in theafterlife?, North
Atlantic Books, 2006
Herodotus,Euterpe,
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translated by George
Rawlinson, New York
1885
Anton J. L. van
Hooff, From
autothanasia to
suicide: self-killing in
classical antiquity,
Routledge, 1990
Miriam
Lichtheim,Ancient
Egyptian Literature,
University of
California Press 1973,
vol.1
Erich H.
Loewy, Textbook o
medical ethics,
Springer, 1989
Donald
McCormick, The
unseen killer; a studyof suicide: its history,
causes and cures,
Muller, 1964
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Alexander
Murray, Suicide in the
Middle Ages: The
curse on self-murder,
Oxford University
Press, 2000
Margaret Oldroyd
Hyde, Elizabeth Held
Forsyth, Suicide: The
Hidden Epidemic,
CompCare, 1989
William Matthew
Flinders
Petrie,Religious life in
ancient Egypt,
Constable, 1924
H. D. Rankin, Sophists,
Socratics, and Cynics,
Taylor & Francis, 1983
Helaine Selin
(ed.),Encyclopaedia o
the history of science,technology, and
medicine in non-
western cultures,
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Springer, 1997
John H. Taylor,Death
and the afterlife in
ancient Egypt, British
Museum Press, 2001,
p.41
Upendra Thakur, The
history of suicide in
India: an Introduction,
Munshi Ram Manohar
Lal, 1963
Eva March Tappan,
ed., The World's Story:
History of the World
in Story, Song and Art,
Vol. III: Egypt, Africa,
and Arabia, Houghton
Mifflin Boston, 1914
Chris Thomas, "First
suicide note?"
inBritish Medical
Journal, July 1980,pp.284f.
John Albert
Wilson, The culture o
7/29/2019 Suicide in Ancient Egypt
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ancient Egypt, Oriental
Institute essay,
Chicago University,
University of Chicago
Press, 1956
Footnotes:
[1] Murray 2000, p.585
[2] P.Mich.:5:231, ca.
47-48 CE, APIS
record:
michigan.apis.2786
[3] van Hooff 1990,
p.156
[4] van Hooff 1990,
p.155
[5] Diodorus, 1.58.3
[6] inManetho, with
an English translation
by W. G. Waddell,
Harvard University
Press 1964, p.125[7] Petrie in Tappan
1914, pp.55
[8] Lichtheim vol.1
7/29/2019 Suicide in Ancient Egypt
31/32
1973, p.163
[9] Thomas 1980,
pp.284f.
[10] Oldroyde & Held
1989, p.36
[11] Oldroyde & Held
1989, p.39
[12] McCormick 1964,
p.33
[13] Selin 1997, p.665
[14] Loewy 1989,
p.145
[15] Baumgarten et
al. 1998, p.389
[16] Taylor 2001, p.41
[17] Carrick 2001, p.94
[18] Rankin 1983,
pp.202ff.
[19] Catan 1985,
Volume 3, pp. 40ff.
[20] Copleston 2003,
Volume 1, pp. 122f.[21] also called St
Augustine, 354-430,
Bishop of Hippo (in
7/29/2019 Suicide in Ancient Egypt
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today's Algeria), one of
the most influential
church fathers.
[22] Heath & Klimo
2006 p.33
[23] Herodotus, 2.100
[24] Goltz 1978, p.227
[25] van Hooff 1990,
p.72
[26] Petrie 1924, p.35
[27] Thakur 1963,
p.127
[28] Murray 2000,
p.585
[29] Wilson 1956, p.11
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