Hey lovebirds, it’s Valentine’s Day. You’d like a Shock of the Old featuring love stories through the ages that retain the power to move and inspire us? Counteroffer: how about some shrivelled hearts?
While it took centuries for science to grasp what the heart did, the association with emotion was established in antiquity. Sappho described her “mad heart” convulsed with love in the seventh century BC and both Plato and Aristotle emphasised its importance. In ancient Egypt the heart was considered the most important organ, “the spiritual seat of intelligence, emotion and memory”. It was the only one left in the body during mummification and key to the afterlife, a sort of spiritual Excel spreadsheet recording your good and bad deeds. If you had been naughty, your heart would be “immediately consumed by the monster Ammit”.
