Does the word Christ come from the Egyptian karast?
No, according to linguists and Egyptologists, though Gerald Massey argued that it does. In his 1907 book Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, he tied the title Christ to karast, his spelling of an Egyptian word he linked with embalming and the mummified dead. The accepted history is different. Christ comes from the Greek Christos, “anointed one”, which translates the Hebrew mashiach, “anointed”, the word behind messiah. Egyptologists read the Egyptian word as qeres, a word for burial, and see no link between the two.
How Gerald Massey made the case: Massey sets out his argument in Book IV and returns to it in Book XII. He reads the Egyptian word, which he writes karast or krst, as embalming and anointing: making the mummy. The dead body, oiled and wrapped, became in his reading an image of new life in the likeness of Osiris. So making a mummy was making “the anointed”, and from that word, he argues, came the Greek Christos. He derives messiah from an Egyptian word too, which he reads as messu. Beside the words he sets customs: the seamless mummy cloth and the seamless coat of John’s Gospel, and the woman at Bethany who anoints Jesus “for my burial”.
Where the word Christ comes from: English Christ comes, through Latin Christus, from the Greek Christos, “anointed”, from the verb chriein, “to anoint”. When the Hebrew Bible was put into Greek, Christos was the word chosen for mashiach, “anointed one”, from a Hebrew verb meaning to anoint or smear with oil. In ancient Israel kings and priests were anointed when they took office, and in later Jewish hope “the anointed one” came to mean, for many, a king God would send. The Gospel of John gives the translation itself: “the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ”. Christ began as a title, Jesus the Christ, before it was used almost as a name.
The Egyptian word: The word Massey writes krst is the Egyptian qrst, “burial”, from the verb qrs, “to bury”, which Egyptologists say as qeres, adding an e by convention. Egyptian writing showed no vowels, so the vowels in karast are not in the Egyptian. The two inscriptions he quotes, in which Anubis grants krast, are the offering prayer found in many tombs, which asks that the owner be buried in the desert cemetery. Oils and resins were indeed used in embalming, but this is the ordinary word for burial.
What scholars say now: Linguists and Egyptologists do not accept the derivation. Christos is fully explained within Greek, and it came into Christian use as the translation of a Hebrew title; neither step passes through Egyptian. Messiah is Hebrew too: the Egyptian mes, as in the name Ramesses, means “born”. Words in two languages often sound alike by chance, as English bad and Persian bad do, so linguists accept a link only when it fits regular patterns of sound change across many words, or a route of borrowing can be traced. Neither is found here. Anointing, burial and new life matter in both Egyptian and Christian rites, and scholars discuss those shared themes; the likeness of the two words is not counted as evidence.
In Massey’s words: “Hence the name of the Christ, Christos in Greek, Chrestus in Latin, for the anointed, was derived, as the present writer previously suggested, from the Egyptian word krst.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book IV, p. 217)
In the app: Trainer › Word Trainer. In the app, the Word Trainer sets Massey’s karast beside the Egyptian qeres, “burial”, and Book IV gives his argument in his own words, with a plain-words note under every part.