Dispute Between a Man and His Ba

The Dispute between a man and his Ba or The Debate Between a Man and his Soul is an ancient Egyptian text dating to the Middle Kingdom. The text is considered to fall into the genre of Sebayt, a form of Egyptian wisdom literature. The text takes the form of a dialogue between a man struggling to come to terms with the hardship of life, and his ba soul. The original copy of the text consists of 155 columns of hieratic writing on the recto of Papyrus Berlin 3024. This original manuscript is fragmented, with the beginning of the text missing. Further fragments were later published in 2017 including the previously absent beginning of the text. Due to the philosophical nature of the work, it has received significant scholarly attention and is widely considered one of the most important works of ancient Egyptian literature.