Soul

=== Ancient Near East ===
{{Main|Ancient Egyptian concept of the soul|Religions of the ancient Near East}}
[[File:Souls of Pe and Nekhen towing at Ramses' Temple in Abydos c.jpg|thumb|right|The [[souls of Pe and Nekhen]] towing the [[royal barge]] on a relief of [[Ramesses II]]'s temple in Abydos]]
In the [[ancient Egyptian religion]], an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. The [[Kuttamuwa stele]], a funeral stele for an 8th-century BCE royal official from [[Sam'al]], describes [[Kuttamuwa]] requesting that his mourners commemorate his life and his [[afterlife]] with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele". It is one of the earliest references to a soul as a separate entity from the body. The {{convert|800|lb|adj=on}} [[basalt]] stele is {{convert|3|ft|abbr=on}} tall and {{convert|2|ft|abbr=on}} wide. It was uncovered in the third season of excavations by the Neubauer Expedition of the [[University of Chicago Oriental Institute|Oriental Institute]] in Chicago, Illinois.<ref>{{cite news |title=Found: An Ancient Monument to the Soul |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18soul.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all |quote=In a mountainous kingdom in what is now southeastern Turkey, there lived in the eighth century B.C. a royal official, Kuttamuwa, who oversaw the completion of an inscribed stone monument, or stele, to be erected upon his death. The words instructed mourners to commemorate his life and afterlife with feasts "for my soul that is in this stele." |work=The New York Times |date=17 November 2008 |access-date=18 November 2008 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090424210754/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/science/18soul.html?8dpc=&_r=1&pagewanted=all |archive-date=24 April 2009}}</ref>