The Heart and the Soul Have Been Connected for Millennia
Ancient philosophers in Egypt, Greece, the Islamic world, and elsewhere believed the heart was the “seat” of the human body and the home of the soul. When preparing a corpse for mummification, Egyptian embalmers removed every organ except the heart. The influential Greek physician Galen wrote that the heart was “the hearthstone and source of the innate heat by which the animal is governed,” a concept that lingered well into the 17th century.
In contrast, Norse people believed the physical characteristics of the heart revealed a person’s courage or cowardice, and the smaller and colder it was, the braver its owner. Though English physician William Harvey discovered the heart’s true physiological role in the circulatory system in 1628, the metaphysical links between the heart and soul remain strong in the minds of many.
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