Dispute between a man and his Ba

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 man, unconvinced, cites the evil and hardship of the world and the promises of an afterlife in accordance with ancient Egyptian religious beliefs.

The most traditional translation of the work and most widely accepted interpretation is that the text is a commentary on suicide and the Egyptian funerary cult, as the man yearns for the promises of an afterlife in the face of his earthly suffering.

instead view the work as the psychological struggle of a man to come to terms with the sorrow that life brings and accept its innate goodness.

Recently, with the discovery of new papyrus fragments, this theory has been substantiated as the initial section mentions the presence of a woman named Ankhet, although her role in the work remains somewhat equivocal.

[9] In the translation of Miriam Lichtheim the text is presented as a mixture of styles: prose, symmetrically structured speech, and lyric poetry.

The introduction identifies the primary speaker of the text as "the sick man" and a woman named Ankhet who is now thought to be an audience for the debate that would follow.