Egyptian Religion and eternal life

In prehistoric Egypt, people believe in many gods. Each city and village has its own, but there are also gods so powerful they rule all over Egypt, all over the whole world, as the Egyptians know it. One such god is, the sun god, Ra. The king of Egypt, Pharaoh, is considered to be the son of the sun god. He is a god in a human body.

The Pharaoh can therefore pass on messages from the gods, to the world of humans. Every year, the Nile floods. When the water recedes, the soil along the river is very fertile. But without the sun, nothing grows. The Pharaoh and priests sacrifice food and drinks for the sun to rise every morning, and, for the Nile to flood every year.

It is very important for the Egyptians that the gods are happy, and therefore the Pharaoh and his priests have great power over the people. Probably the will of the gods and the king, often coincide. The people do as the king wants, because most people think, if you behave in this life, you will have eternal life after you die, and may live in a place that is even better than Egypt. Another mighty god is Osiris. He rules over the kingdom of the dead.

The Egyptians believe that humans consist of a soul, and a body. When someone dies, they divide. In order to have eternal life, the soul must find its way back to the body. But when someone dies, the body rots. So, how can the soul recognize the body?

For a long time, anyone who dies is buried in the dry desert sand. where their body dries out, so it looks nearly the same as when they were alive. But when kings become more powerful, they begin to be buried in large stone coffins, sarcophagi. The stone is eternal, just as the king’s soul is assumed to be, because he is the son of Ra. The sarcophagi are placed in pyramids.

In the sarcophagi it is moist, and the bodies rot, and smell bad. It will be difficult for the king to say that he is the ‘son of the sun god’ if his ancestor's bodies are transformed into rotten bones. And, how will the soul, find the body? The Egyptians invent a clever way to prevent the body from rotting. Hunters already know how to make meat stay edible, for a long time.

They take out the stomach, lungs and other intestines, and salt the rest of the body, or the meat. It's called preserving. The same method works with the bodies of kings. But in the kings’ bodies, the heart is left in. Then, the body is treated with oils, herbs and salt and wrapped in fabric.

This is called embalming, and takes several weeks. A new profession is born - embalmers. The wrapped bodies are called mummies. Mummification is at first only allowed for the king and his family, but over time it becomes popular for anyone who can afford it. As ‘grave goods’, the dead get important texts, written on a kind of paper made of grass, called papyrus.

The texts, explain what to do when you meet Osiris, the ruler of the kingdom of the dead. There, all the experiences of a person’s heart are weighed against the goddess Maat's ‘feather of truth’. If it weighs evenly, the person gets eternal life. Eternal life? Well, maybe...

Several millennia later, pharmacists grind mummies into powder to use as medicine. Also, a brown dye was produced from the mummies, used by artists, when painting… In this way, the mummies lived on… But, it was probably not eternal life, quite as the Egyptians had imagined it!