Suicide is ageless

A press release from the Royal Society of Psychiatrists. Reproduced because I’ve only seen snippets of it the Scottishpress.

“Death is by my sight today, like a well trodden way…Death is by my sight today, like the longing of a manto see home…I am laden with misery…”

Analysis of an ancient Egyptian poem by a psychiatrist and an Egyptologist shows that it describes the psychopathology of suicide with great accuracy.

Dispute over Suicide was a poem written by an unnamed Egyptian writer between 2000 and 1740 BC on papyrus in hieroglyphics.

The writer is known as ‘The Eloquent Peasant’, and was commissioned by King Meri-ka-re to write a poem in order to dissuade people from committing suicide.

History of suicide

Suicide as a form of human behaviour is probably as ancient as man himself. Attitudes towards those who take their own lives have veered between condemnation and tolerance throughout the ages.

It is possible that moral and cultural views about suicide have affected its incidence, statistics on suicide, and even coroners’ verdicts. An historical approach makes it possible to understand what meaning suicide has for people with different experiences from different backgrounds and generations.

The analysis

Dr. George Tadros, a consultant psychiatrist, and Dr. Ahmes Pahor, an Egyptologist and ENT consultant, used a computer programme with special software for qualitative analysis to assess the poem.

The Eloquent Peasant gives a detailed description of negative thoughts, hopelessness and helplessness, which are characteristic of the state of mind of a person contemplating suicide. The poem presents an accurate picture of depressive mood, and the negative thought pattern that accompanies it.

The poet also gives a unique illustration of ‘magical thinking’, which is frequently associated with suicide. “Surely he who is yonder shall be a living God Punishing the sin of him who commits it.”

“Death is by my sight today…” The poet gives a detailed account of the feeling of suicide as approaching death, and demonstrates how desperate people could see suicide as a desirable outcome.

However, The Eloquent Peasant also offers a solution of reconciliation to resolve the conflict for people contemplating suicide.

“What my soul said to me.Put care aside, my comrade and brother.Make an offering on the brazier and cling to life…”

The authors of the study comment that the Ancient Egyptians appear to have had a significant grasp of the psychopathology of suicide. It would be interesting, they say, to study wider mental health issues and practice in ancient Egypt.

There is a book on the subject by Anton van Hooff, but it deals only with Greek and Roman suicides. His research does allow us to guess at the likely method though.

A comparison with other cultures gives strong supporting evidence that the rope must have been a common means in spite of all the public horror it caused. In all non-urban societies hanging is the normal method. This truth was established for instance in the case of the Shona in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. At the end of the 1950s hanging accounted for half of the self-killings in Western Nigeria. In a series of studies on suicide in Africa each paper says that hanging is by far the most popular way. In Bunyoro hanging was practised in more than 90 per cent of all cases. One of those interviewed by Bohannan (1960) even mixed up hanging and suicide. With respect to method Bohannan concludes on the basis of the studies undertaken on his instigation: ‘the overwhelming method of suicide in Africa is hanging’. The history of the western world too indicates that hanging was commonly chosen. It was so in 32 out of the 54 medieval cases Schmitt collected. The data for Victorian England give a supplementary indication that in pre-modern society hanging was always the usual method. At that time and place hanging was practised more by men than women, more by the old than the young and above all more often by the poor. As the time goes on the proportion of hanging diminishes: in 1861 it was still practised in 48 per cent of all cases; in Edwardian England of 1911 its quota had dropped and was 29 per cent, whereas poison rose from 7 to 14 per cent. In France a third of all suicides are ‘still’ committed by way of hanging.

Anton J.L. van Hooff. From autothanasia to suicide : self-killing in classical antiquity. Routledge. 1990. pp 68-9.