The Egypt Story....... (Life & Death )

The ancient Egyptians had a great respect for life and all different creatures. For hours and hours, day after day, they watched what happened around them in the natural world. They had everything; water, food, fertile land, animals, birds, the sun and lovely weather. They then faced the inevitable fact of this life, which is death; sooner or later they would die and their life would come to an end. They started to wonder what would happen to them after death!

From there they started to believe in a second life; life after death in the hereafter, which would be an eternal life and would last forever. They loved life and wanted to be immortal, so they kept their eyes on the second life even more than the first. In believing in life after death, they assumed they would take a journey from the first life to the second one in the underworld. That journey would be very dangerous and full of enemies and bad spirits, so they needed guidance and guardians, and their gods would fill that role. They also needed guide books to direct them and usher them into the underworld, so books like the Book of the Dead, the pyramid texts and coffin texts were there to help them and show them the way.

To come back in the afterlife, they needed their bodies well preserved, so they practiced mummification to keep the body in good form. They built the tombs, which were known as the houses of eternity, where they would live until they were called by the gods on the judgment day. On that day they would be judged by the god Osiris, and their heart would be weighed against the feather of justice. If the heart is heavy it means that person was evil and will be sent to hell, while if his heart is lighter than the feather, it means he was good and will go to heaven. Heaven or hell would be eternal, so we can understand how important the second life was. That is why when they built tombs or temples, they used stone, while building their houses and even their palaces, and they used mud brick and wood. In most of the cases, these houses couldn't survive to today.

We can never say that the ancient Egyptian art was boring or dull, because they always mention death and the afterlife. One could say it was very practical to dream of the eternal life in heaven, which was their main motive to build that great civilization.

written by :

Hisham El Meniawy
Guest lecturer & Egyptologist

www.hegyptology.com