Most people spend their lives enjoying their life and thinking little about their death; however for the Ancient Egyptians this wasn’t the case. Their mythology shows that they were a deeply religious race, with their whole culture based on religion and a strong belief in the fact that they would be reborn after death in the afterlife.

They believed that this afterlife would mean that after their life on earth, their dead lived on in the Fields of Aaru and every day would accompany the Sun on its journey. To this ancient civilization living was just the means to an end – their death; consequently they spent a great deal of their life preparing for this death.

Their life consisted of worshiping the gods and preserving the three elements that they believed their bodies consisted of – which were named the ‘Ka’, ‘Ba’ and ‘Akh’. They thought that when the human body expired, the ‘Ka’ (which was the body double) and the ‘Ba’ (the person’s personality), traveled to the ‘Kingdom of the Dead’ and lived and worked in the Fields of Aaru (or Yaru). When the ‘Ka’ and ‘Ba’ were reunited in the afterlife, they created the ‘Akh’ (a glorified spirit) that remained unchanged forever.

As death to them was only a tiny blip to them, they collected treasures to be buried with them; and as they believed that they would carry on their mortal occupations after death, they also would have the tools of their trade buried with them.

An important part of protecting their bodies for the afterlife was the practice of Mummification of their bodies. It was just this fixation with the afterlife that led to the creation of the pyramids in Egypt; and it is these pyramids that over the decades have provided modern civilization with such a detailed account of the mythology of this vast ancient civilization and their beliefs in their afterlife.

Early on in their civilization the Ancient Egyptians used the dry desert sand to bury their dead in pits. The bodies buried were naturally preserved by the aridness of the conditions. As time went on the wealthier of the society made their burial places more elaborate by burying their bodies in stone tombs and so it was necessary to arrange some artificial form of mummification.

This was done by removing the liver, stomach, lungs, and intestines, which were kept in jars for use in the afterlife (interestingly they did not think that the brain was of any use and so this was pulled through the cranium cavity and discarded). The body was then wrapped in bands of linen and placing in either a wooden coffin or a stone rectangular container, called a sarcophagus. 

The family of the deceased placed statues of their loved ones in their tombs to take the place of them as they spent their days in the afterlife. They would also leave food for the deceased, however in many cases the family would place drawings of foods on the walls of the tomb which they believed would be transformed into real food in the afterlife. 

The deceased were also given written instructions on how to survive the journey to the afterlife and how to ‘live’ in it, which came in the form of prayers, hymns, and magical spells on the walls of the tombs and, more importantly, in the “Book of the Dead”, copies of which were often buried in the tomb and contained magic spells to help the deceased on their journey.

When an Ancient Egyptian ended their life on earth they believed that they went to the ‘Hall of Two Truths,’ where they appeared before a panel of 14 judges who judged them on their lives. Then their heart was removed and the deceased’s heart weighed against the ‘Shu’ (a feather taken from the headdress of the goddess Ma’at (the goddess of truth and justice). If the heart weighed less than the feather, they were allowed to pass on to the underworld, however if it weighed more they would be devoured by the demoness of punishment, Ammut – also known as ‘the eater of hearts’. Ammut had the head of a crocodile and hippopotamus legs.

The Ancient Egyptians have provided modern civilization so much history and information through their mythology and the archeological finds, that they remain one of the most famous ancient civilizations in most people’s perception today.