In this blog post, we will compare the meaning of “Overlife” in my book “The Overlife, A Tale Of Schizophrenia” and the meaning of the same word among scholars of Ancient Egypt or Egyptologists. We will see that they are pretty different but nonetheless interesting to compare. Egyptologists also use “Underlife,” which doesn’t occur in my novel.
In Egyptology, the terms Overlife and Underlife describe the two parts of the afterlife in ancient Egyptian belief. The Overlife was the spiritual realm where the deceased would continue to exist after death. It was a place of peace and happiness where the dead could enjoy the company of their loved ones and participate in activities they had enjoyed in life.
The Underlife, on the other hand, was the realm of the dead. It was a dark and dangerous place where the deceased could be punished for their misdeeds in life. However, it was also possible for the deceased to achieve a state of enlightenment in the Underlife and eventually ascend to the Overlife.
The terms Overlife and Underlife were first used by the Egyptologist Suzanne Perfect-Miller, for example, in her book Overlife/Underlife of Ancient Egypt (1990). Perfect-Miller argued that these terms were more accurate than the traditional terms “heaven” and “hell” for describing the two parts of the afterlife in ancient Egyptian belief.
Overlife was closely linked to the Egyptian belief in the ka. The ka was a spiritual double of the deceased, believed to continue to exist after death. The ka was responsible for providing the dead with life force, and it was essential for the deceased to have a ka to survive in the afterlife.
The concept of the Underlife was closely linked to the Egyptian belief in the judgment of the dead. After death, the deceased was believed to be judged by the gods. If the deceased was found to have lived a good life, they would be allowed to enter the Overlife. However, if the dead was found to have lived a bad life, they would be punished in the Underlife.
The concepts of Overlife and Underlife played an essential role in ancient Egyptian culture. They helped to shape the way that the Egyptians thought about death and the afterlife, and they also influenced the way that they prepared for death. For example, the Egyptians often built tombs for their deceased loved ones, filling them with objects they believed would help the dead survive in the afterlife. The concepts of Overlife and Underlife continue to interest scholars and historians today.
In my novel “The Overlife, A Tale Of Schizophrenia,” the word “Overlife” is a noun derived from the verb “overlive.” In Collins English Dictionary, published by HarperCollins, “overlive” means to live longer than another person or to survive an event. I feature in the novel, in particular, the notion of “Overlife” as the legacy someone leaves upon their death and, more predominantly, the life of a person after the event of the onset of schizophrenia and/or its diagnosis, the official diagnosis affecting how others view you. Therefore, “Overlife,” as I use the term, only applies to the world of the living, even when it is the legacy of someone deceased. We make no assumption about the afterlife, and there is no mention of good or bad fates after death.
Hopefully, this blog clears up any misunderstanding about these two different usages of the word “Overlife.”