An Interview with Brian J. McVeigh
Julian Jaynes Society Founder and Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten interviews anthropologist, author, and Julian Jaynes Society Senior Researcher Brian J. McVeigh on his book “The Psychology of Ancient Egypt: Reconstructing A Lost Mentality.” “The Psychology of Ancient Egypt” explores the connections between ancient Egyptian religion and culture and Julian Jaynes’s theory of the origin of consciousness and bicameral mentality.
Buy the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Ancient-Egypt-Reconstructing-Mentality/dp/B0CHL92V36
https://www.julianjaynes.org/book/the-psychology-of-ancient-egypt/
Watch the entire 80 minute interview and Q&A session by becoming a Sustaining Member of the Julian Jaynes Society
The book and discussion build upon the discussion of bicameral mentality in ancient Egypt by Julian Jaynes, in his landmark book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. If you are new to Julian Jaynes’s ideas, we suggest that you watch one of our introductory videos on the topic first.
Recorded on November 16, 2023.
Transcript:
Marcel Kuijsten: So, let’s get started. We’re going to try to do about 45 minutes of an interview on Brian McVeigh’s latest book, The Psychology of Ancient Egypt: Reconstructing a Lost Mentality. It looks at ancient Egypt from the perspective of Julian Jaynes’ theory. And once we get done with that, we’ll open it up for discussions and questions from all of you. Brian McVeigh received his PhD in anthropology from Princeton University where he knew Julian Jaynes and studied with him. He’s been thinking about Jaynes’s theory for probably most of his life. He then went on to teach and live in Japan for many years and studied uh Japanese culture and society. After returning to the U.S., he taught at the University of Arizona for many years, teaching anthropology, and more recently he is trained in mental health counseling, and he’s now working as a mental health counselor. He has authored many books and articles that are relevant to Julian Jaynes’s theory and he is a regular contributor to the Julian Jaynes Society blog, which I encourage you to take a look at if you haven’t seen it before. So with that, welcome Brian McVeigh. Glad you could be with us.
Brian McVeigh: Thank you. And thank you everyone for coming in tonight.
Marcel Kuijsten: Great. So, is there anything you’d — any general comments, Brian, that you’d like to make before we get started?
Brian McVeigh: Yes. There are a few prefaratory remarks I’d like to make. The first one concerns, I guess, what you might call methodology. This book, in this book, I’m not making any claims that I have come up with new information or new knowledge about Egyptology. I’m not trained in Egyptology. I have not gone out on archeological digs. I’m not comfortable translating hieroglyphics. So what I have done is taken Jaynes’s theory and applied it to secondary and tertiary sources of information about Egypt. So I just want to be clear about that. And what I found is that if you have a good theory, the empirical evidence falls in place. And I had that sense when I did a book on the Bible and in fact other works that I’ve done using Julian Jaynes’s theory. Just to repeat, it’s sort of like a mathematical equation. If the math is good, you’re going to be able to discover a lot of interesting things. And so that’s been my own personal experience applying [a] Jaynesian perspective to different civilizations.
The other point I’d like to make is that in Chapter Two I list nine common objections to Jaynes. And I did this, I suppose, to sort of preempt what I have found from past experience — people usually have a predictable way to respond to what Jaynes said. So, if you have not bought the book or if you did buy the book, you’re planning on buying the book, please pay attention to Chapter Two and those objections. And perhaps later, if we have time, we can talk about what people commonly, or I should say, how people commonly respond to Jaynes. I try to nip things in the bud early on.
The next thing I want to say is that ancient Egyptian history is about 3,000 years long. That’s a very, very long time. That’s longer than — in fact I think Egypt is probably the longest, certainly one of the longest, civilizations. So when we talk about Egypt — whether we’re adopting a Jaynesian perspective or not — we have to be really careful. We have to really, as much as possible — and sometimes it’s very difficult to do this — but as much as possible what period of ancient Egypt are we talking about because the meaning of concepts, the meaning of material culture, changes and we have to be sensitive to that. So, in any case, those are just a few introductory remarks that I’d like to have made.
Marcel Kuijsten: Thank you. So what made you decide to do this particular project?
Brian McVeigh: So I personally think that Jaynes’s theory, as I said before, it it’s a wonderful theory in that it seems to explain many things — not just religious history. But if I’m going to make that claim, I have to make sure that Jaynes works in all places. We can’t cherry-pick. We have to make sure that we apply Jaynes as much as possible to different civilizations. And of course I’ll never be able to do that in my lifetime — to apply James everywhere. But I have made an effort to look at Jaynes in Mesopotamia, applying Jaynes analysis to the Bible, of course tonight’s discussion ancient Egypt, and Japan. And so that’s why I decided to look at Egypt, because Egypt, as I said before, has a very long history. There’s a tremendous wealth of data there — about 3,000 years worth. And if Jaynes does not work in Egypt, then we have a serious problem. Now in his book, The Origin of Consciousness, of course Jaynes did devote some attention to Egypt, but what I’ve tried to do is go much deeper — go beyond that — and find out where Jaynes works and where he doesn’t work in ancient Egypt. And my conclusion is that he works very well in ancient Egypt, explaining a lot of the so-called mysteries or problems in Egyptology.
Marcel Kuijsten: And in the book you mention some of the challenges faced by translators when confronted by ancient languages. This is an issue that Jaynes talks about as well — how there’s a tendency to kind of impart a modern psychology in a lot of these cases. Can you discuss that issue?
Brian McVeigh: Sure. So this is very important because whether you adopt a Jaynesian perspective or not, we have to be very careful trying to reconstruct the world view of people who have been dead for several thousand years. And I think there is an unfortunate tendency for some translators to jump to conclusions, to even distort, misinterpret what what ancient peoples were thinking or feeling. The way around that I think, the method that I adopt, it’s a bit clunky sometimes, but as much as possible to be try to give a literal translation. Because that way we’re guarding against imposing our own views. And what I want to do now is just give several examples of what I’m talking about to really illustrate this problem.
So we’ll talk about this notion later of ka.” Ka is a very, very — it’s probably the most important religious concept in Egyptology. And ka — I’m not going to talk too much now, about what it means how to translate it — but it can mean something like “spirit,” “soul,” “spiritual double,” “one’s guardian spirit” — something that sort of followed you around from birth and goes with you after you die, hang around your tomb. In any case, I’m just introducing this idea of ka because this is going to come up in the exercise that I’m going to engage in now.
So, looking at English translations of some ancient texts, what I would notice is that certain translators would freely translate, and really missed the point, I think. So, for example, this one phrase, “a man of standing,” and I don’t have to give the context. I’ll just use that phrase, “a man of standing.” That’s the English translation of an Egyptian text. “A man of standing,” presumably something to do with status. But when I looked at the original Egyptian, it actually says “one whose kas are harnessed.” “One whose cause are harnessed.” I’m not sure exactly what that means. All I know is that it means there’s this idea that there is some sort of supernatural force, some sort of spiritual double that is involved in this idea that a person has status.
Another example, “it is his mood which prompts him to be generous.” That’s the English gloss. “It is his mood which prompts him to be generous.” But if you look at the original Egyptian, it actually says “it is the ka which stretches out his hands.” “It is the ka which stretches out his hands.” So that fits into a Jaynesian perspective. The idea is that there’s some sort of spiritual force motivating or compelling the individual to stretch out his hand in a gesture of generosity. That’s very different. We’re talking about, if we pay attention to the language, we can see that we’re dealing with a very different psychology.
Another example, “this serves only to arouse his temper.” “This serves only to arouse his temper” — to get someone angry. Well, if you look at the original Egyptian, “this is an abomination of the ka.” Okay? So, in other words, the ka is very upset about something. One’s spiritual guardian or spiritual double — however you want to translate ka — that’s what we’re really talking about. So, you know, I could go on and on and give many examples.
I’ll just give one more example to make the point. This is the English translation by someone, “he who behaves in a decent manner.” It sounds straightforward — “he who behaves in a decent manner.” But if you look at the original Egyptian it actually says “he who pleases God.” “He who pleases God.” And when I was going through these examples, I just had a thought, and maybe I shouldn’t say this, maybe I’m being unfair — but I could not help but wonder that some modern scholars, modern translators, for whatever reason, are uncomfortable with this idea of how powerful religiosity was in ancient Egypt. That somehow they want to make the Egyptians look more secular or less religious. I don’t know, that’s speculation. I could be wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. But in any case, I just wanted to give some examples to illustrate how important it is to look at what the actual text says — if we want to understand ancient psychologies.
Marcel Kuijsten: Yes. And for those that are newer here to Jaynes’s theory, this is a tremendously important issue. It’s something we’ve talked about in the past. It’s something that the late Rabbi Cohn talked about at the Julian Jaynes Society conference 10 years ago — and you can watch his presentation on that on our YouTube channel, talking about this tremendous problem of imposing a modern psychology on ancient cultures. In history they call it the “presentist fallacy.” It seems to be almost an innate tendency that people have to make others as similar to us as possible. And this creates a huge obstacle of course with understanding Jaynes’s theory, because what we really need is a more literal interpretation, as you said, if we’re going to really understand these important psychological differences and this transition that Jaynes explains.
So speaking of the ka — again, for those who are maybe a little newer to Jaynes’s theory, Jaynes does talk a little bit about the ka, but could you explain for everyone the relevance of the ka to Jaynes’ theory? And also, how would one even try to explain this without Jaynes’ theory? It seems, to me at least, that without Jaynes’ theory, it’s a very difficult concept to understand, but with Jaynes’ theory, it really seems to make perfect sense.
Brian McVeigh: That’s right. And I think it makes perfect sense not just in Egypt, but in other places, for example parts of ancient Mesopotamia, where they had a similar concept — something like a personal god or a personal guardian spirit. So ka, just to give you an example of the range of different translations, in other words, how modern researchers have really struggled to come to terms with this one concept. And we’re talking just about one concept, right? There are many other concepts that are very problematic when we look at ancient Egypt. So some people have suggested “soul,” “spirit,” “ghost,” “vital force,” “willpower,” “life-spirit,” “nature,” “luck,” “genius,” “destiny.” So, as I said, you can see we’re all over the place there trying to get a intellectual grasp of what ka was all about. Just for for the sake of convenience, in my book, I usually just translate it as a “spiritual double.” And in my book, in one chapter, I devote a considerable amount of space, analyzing and trying to really get to a level of nuanced interpretation of what ka meant, because it meant so many different things.
It was wrapped up in magic and sorcery. There was this idea that ka, along Jaynesian lines, authorized one’s behavior — ka was one’s guide. Ka was also involved with cosmic and creative energies, and of course this sort of overlaps with this idea of agriculture, which would have been very important in ancient Egypt. So, it has all types of different meanings.
One other very important meaning, for our purposes, is this idea of “a life force that communicates.” Well, what does it communicate? It communicates thoughts to the person that the ka belongs to. And again, that sounds like a very Jaynesian interpretation. This idea that, whether it’s our ancestors or gods or spirits, there’s something outside myself communicating to me. At least that’s the perception — that it’s outside me — communicating to me, guiding my behavior, admonishing me, giving me advice.
Something else I would mention about ka — this idea of “doppelgangers”. And of course “doppelgangers” is something that we hear about in folklore and in different folkloric traditions around the world. This idea of seeing one’s own person. In fact, there there’s a whole study in psychology about this specific type of hallucinations, of seeing oneself. And I can’t help but wonder that probably that is some sort of bicameral vestige — that there’s something in the our neurology that’s, for whatever reason, under stress, is being triggered when we see a double of ourselves. So, in any case, I just thought I would footnote that with this discussion of of ka.
Marcel Kuijsten: Yeah. So this is like their — in Jaynesian terms — their their bicameral guiding voice, and similar to what we would see with people that regularly experience auditory hallucinations or even visual hallucinations today. And we kind of see the great lengths that historians and others have gone to try to explain this in other ways, because of course they weren’t familiar with Jaynes’ theory, or Jaynes’s theory hadn’t yet been proposed, and they hadn’t connected the dots the way that Jaynes had to things like modern hallucinations. Let’s talk next about this concept of divine kingship that we see in ancient Egypt, and, as well as in other ancient civilizations. These god-king theocracies, where the kings themselves were also seen as gods. And I think this is something also that’s very relevant to to Jaynes’s ideas.
Brian McVeigh: Yes. So of course we find this everywhere. And I’m still looking for a civilization where we do not find what, we call politics in today’s world, wrapped up with theology. That is a universal in the ancient world, and we we have become so used to that that we take it for granted. We don’t actually ask ourselves, “why might that be the case?” How come we cannot find an ancient civilization that was secular, where people did not start off believing in the gods and believing that the rulers should somehow be divinely inspired to lead the community? Well, one way to to begin this discussion of divine kingship in Egypt is just to compare — in most places, for example, in ancient Mesopotamia, the idea was that the king was not a god. The king was a sort of a deputy or steward put in charge by the divinities to govern. Egypt, a lot of people like to point out how in the case of Egypt, Egypt is very different, because the idea is that the pharaoh was a god himself. If you look carefully at the records, it’s actually a little more subtle than that, it’s a little more complicated. And what I mean by that …