In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief of "an immaterial aspect or essence of a living being", generally applied to humans, called the soul. In lay terms the soul is the spiritual essence of a person, which includes our identity, personality, and memories that is believed to be able to survive our physical death. Etymology The Modern English noun soul is derived from Old English sāwol, sāwel. The earliest attestations reported in the Oxford English Dictionary are from the 8th century. In King Alfred's translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae, it is used to refer to the immaterial, spiritual, or thinking aspect of a person, as contrasted with the person's physical body; in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50, it means "life" or "animate existence". The Old English word is cognate with other historical Germanic terms for the same idea, including Old Frisian sēle, sēl (which could also mean "salvation", or "solemn oath"), Gothic saiwala, Old High German sēula, sēla, Old Saxon sēola, and Old Norse sāla. Present-day cognates include Dutch ziel and German Seele. Religious views In Judaism and in some Christian denominations, only human beings have immortal souls (although immortality is disputed within Judaism and the concept of immortality was most likely influenced by Plato). For example, Thomas Aquinas, borrowing directly from Aristotle's On the Soul, attributed "soul" (anima) to all organisms but argued that only human souls are immortal. Other religions (most notably Hinduism and Jainism) believe that all living things from the smallest bacterium to the largest of mammals are the souls themselves (Atman, jiva) and have their physical representative (the body) in the world. The actual self is the soul, while the body is only a mechanism to experience the karma of that life. Thus if one sees a tiger then there is a self-conscious identity residing in it (the soul), and a physical representative (the whole body of the tiger, which is observable) in the world. Some teach that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. This belief is called animism. Ancient Near East In the ancient Egyptian religion, an individual was believed to be made up of various elements, some physical and some spiritual. Similar ideas are found in ancient Assyrian and Babylonian religion. The Kuttamuwa stele, a funeral stele for an 8th-century BCE royal official from Sam'al, describes Kuttamuwa requesting that his mourners commemorate his life and his afterlife