Rebel in the Soul: A Sacred Text of Ancient Egypt

Egyptologists have tried for many years to decipher and interpret what little remains of ancient Egypt, in the exploration of tombs and artifacts, and in fragments of ancient literature in bits and pieces of hieroglyphic texts. The Berlin Papyrus 3024 is a case in point. Egyptologists have spent countless hours (years) trying to interpret this hieroglyphic text believed to be some 4,000 years old.

In Bika Reed's translation, Rebel in the Soul, she approaches this text in a rather multi-disciplinary way. Reed, hailing from Yugoslavia, and currently living in England, has explored life as a student of philosophy, as an Egyptologist, and is also a composer, filmmaker, a scholar, and some would say, 'a mystic'. She spent 12 years studying the Berlin Papyrus 3024, and her book is the culmination of that effort.



Rebel in the Soul is presented to the reader as a translation that is both poetically and logically succinct. As she would put it, it is like trying to interpret all of nature through a single tattered leaf. Or trying to understand Shakespeare through a single torn page of Hamlet. To turn the pages of Rebel in the Soul is a pleasure with each page of text opposed by a page of visual illustration. She includes the complete text in its original hieroglyphic form as well; an appendix of sorts.

So what was the Berlin Papyrus 3024 all about? First of all, it appears that it is a portion of a larger (still missing) text, since it begins with an argument that seems already well underway. An argument of a man with his soul. Reed takes the position that it is an initiatory manuscript, aimed at young minds approaching a point of existential crisis. Who am I? Why am I here? What is my place in the big scheme of things? And why should I not kill myself? Here is a man contemplating suicide, and asking his soul 'why not'? Basically, he would like his soul to agree with him. In fact, he would like his soul to go with him, because he is tired of living.

Here are two pages of Reed's book that illustrate the artful and poetic way in which she presents this heady text. (The soul talking back...)