Ancient Egyptian Quote of the Week

Just a quick one today because I'm working on prepping posts for at least the first week of April for the Blogging A to Z Challenge.

First let me admit that I'm taking the following quote completely out of context and I don't remember what text it came from. It's just something I copied into my notes from Jan Assmann's Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt but didn't remember to properly attribute. Still, this one line really spoke to me. Sometimes you know things but need to hear them put in just the right words for them to really sink into your thick skull, you know?

Follow your heart so long as you live, and do not multiply concerns.

Now, when Egyptians are talking about the heart they don't mean feelings and emotions as we do in the West. At least, not just. To the Egyptians the heart was the seat of the emotions, memory, intelligence, will, etc. All those things that make a person a person. And they knew the heart as the source of the blood which brought its life giving connectivity to the body. To be "weary of heart" meant to be dead.


I like to think that this advice to "follow your heart" is a kind of "be true to yourself" message and a reminder to never rely on just your emotions or your reason, but to employ all those aspects of yourself in everything you do. They work best together in connectivity. And of course, I could definitely use a healthy dose of not multiplying concerns. Couldn't we all?