Like all human cultures, the people of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were .....
To make the journey to the afterlife, the Egyptians provided books of magic.
DYING: DEATH AND THE AFTERLIFE Dr. Peter J. Brand Like all human cultures, the people of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were greatly troubled by death. Both of these ancient societies sought after ways of understanding what happened to a person after death. Each culture had its own rituals and procedures for burying their dead and preparing them for the journey to the afterlife. Each believed that the realm of the dead was an Underworld located beneath the earth. Despite these broad similarities, there were stark contrasts between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian views of death. The Egyptians went to greater length in equipping the dead for the afterlife, but they were more optimistic about what awaited them in the Underworld. By contrast, Mesopotamian views of death were more pessimistic, resulting in less elaborate preparations for death.
An Egyptian funeral. The mummy is about to be placed in the tomb. A priest wearing a jackal mask to represent Anubis the god of mummification holds the mummy while the deceased’s wife and daughter weep for him. Other priests conduct rituals to reawaken the mummy. The priest at left with the leopard skin was ideally the man’s own son and heir.
Mesopotamian Underworld The Mesopotamian Underworld was a dark and gloomy place ruled by its Queen, the 1
Goddess Ereshkigal, who lived in a palace made of a precious gemstone called lapis lazuli. A Babylonian myth called The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld gives a vivid description of this sad place:(1) “To the land of no return, the realm of Ereshkigal Ishtar set her mind. To the dark house, the home of Ereshkigal To the house which none leave who enter it To the road from which there is no way back To the house where the inhabitants have no light Where dust is their sustenance and clay their food Where they see no light, living in darkness Where they are clothed like birds with wings for clothes, And where the door and door latch are coated with dust.” Although Ishtar was a powerful goddess, she did not belong in the Underworld. So as she passes through seven gates at its entrance, she is stripped of her rich clothing and jewelry.
A cylinder seal impression showing the goddess Innana (center) entering the Underworld. Innana was the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar.
While this account portrays the Mesopotamian afterlife as a dank and dreary place, it was not always gloomy and unpleasant. The Mesopotamians noticed that every day at dusk, the sun sinks below the western horizon and rises from the earth the next morning in the east. Like the Egyptians, they believed their sun god, Shamash, visited the Underworld every night on his endless cyclical journey through the universe: across the sky (during the day) and through the Underworld (at night). When Shamash was in the Underworld, the dead enjoyed a brief “daytime.” But even Shamash’s great light is weak and pale in the Underworld. 1 The Descent of Ishtar is a later variant of the Descent of Innana. Ishtar is a Babylonian goddess who is the equivalent of Innana, an older Sumerian goddess.
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The inhabitants of the Underworld were believed to be shadowy spirits— pale imitations of the people they had been in life. Everything in the Underworld was a dim, insubstantial reflection of life on earth. There were even cities, but all was dark. The spirits of the dead became stronger or weaker depending on how well the living cared for the dead. The dead needed the living to provide their spirits with offerings of food and drink on a regular basis to sustain them in the afterlife. This “care and feeding” of dead spirits is called a Mortuary cult and worked much like the cult of the gods themselves who also benefited from offering cults. No Judgment In Mesopotamia, there was no concept of a moral judgment of the dead. It mattered not whether the person had done good or the evil while they were on earth. There was a court of gods called Anunnaki who instructed the newly deceased on the “rules” of the Underworld, but did not pass judgment on their morality. Every person— whether they had been good or bad, and regardless of whether they were a king or a peasant— everyone was treated the same in the Underworld. At night the sun god Shamash held another kind of court as he travelled through the Underworld. Shamash mediated interactions between the living and the ghosts of the dead. He punished ghosts who pestered the living, and he also found food offerings to support poor ghosts who did not have a mortuary cult to provide for their needs. Journey After death The newly dead did not immediately appear inside the Underworld. They had to make a perilous journey to reach it in order to be accepted there. Since the trip was long and arduous, the living were responsible for making sure that their dead relatives were properly equipped to make the trek. The dead were buried with food, sandals (and for the wealthy, chariots), as well as other traveling gear and supplies in order to travel across Mesopotamia and reach the kingdom of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. They passed through demon-infested hill country, and finally they crossed the Khubur River. The ferryman who took the dead across the River Khubur was named KhumutTabal which means, “Quick, take me there!” Finally, the deceased reached the City of the Dead, where Ereshkigal reigned. Once the deceased reached the outer gate of the city, they needed permission from its gatekeeper, named Bidu, meaning “Open up!” in order to enter the Underworld. Ancestral Sprits and the Mortuary Cult Because the spirit of the deceased was a kind of animated shadow of the person they had been in life, the dead needed to be properly cared for and provided with food and drink by the living. The living had primary responsibility for the mortuary cult of their dead relatives and ancestors. The quality of the deceased’s existence depended on the funerary offerings that their families (or priests) provided. It was equally important for the living to support their dead relatives. The recently dead – children, parents, and grandparents— each had their own distinct ghosts, but after several generations, the dead slowly lost their individual identity and became part of a larger, collective ancestral 3
spirit.(2) Those who could afford it provided for their own mortuary cult before their death by ensuring an “income” of food and drink offerings would be offered to their spirits by a relative or a priest. Ghosts Haunting the Living It was important for the living to honor all of their dead ancestors. When neglected, the spirits of the dead could haunt the living to show their displeasure. It was also possible for the living to call on their friendly ancestors to deal with haunting or other dangers caused by hostile spirits. The ghosts of those who had not received a proper burial and offerings—or whose offering cult had ceased to function— would then lead a pitiful beggar’s existence in the Underworld. Lacking proper care, these spirits could then begin to persecute the living. Those who had died in unfortunate circumstances could also become angry, troublesome ghosts: murder victims, stillborn children, unmarried young adults, drowning victims, famine victims, accident victims, and so on. These hostile spirits would try to blind or sicken the living. In certain cases, the ghosts of the unmarried might try to sexually seduce the living. Other spirits would annoy the living by making unwelcome appearances either at home, in the street, or in the living’s dreams. Eventually, even the richest funeral cult ended, leaving the possibility that the Underworld population of poor spirits and angry ghosts would outnumber the happy ancestors, and eventually, the living. In order to prevent the dead from outnumbering the living, souls were “recycled” by being reborn. The souls of the soon to be reborn traveled out of the netherworld along a special road and into the wombs of pregnant women to be reborn. Death in Ancient Egypt In Ancient Egypt, thoughts of death and the afterlife were based upon nature and the world around them. The Egyptians compared their life cycle to that of the sun god: the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and based on this cycle, the Egyptians noted that the deceased must be in the “Beautiful West,” with the sun god. The Beautiful West was considered to be a paradise by the Egyptians – similar to the life they had on earth. Contrary to popular belief, Egyptians were not obsessed with death – in fact, they loved life so much that they wanted to continue living it in the afterlife. Although the Egyptian afterlife was not completely “bright and happy,” they were essentially optimistic that the good— and the well prepared— could look forward to a pleasant and enjoyable existence after death. The Ka and the Ba
2 This loss of individual identity is similar to the destiny of the Chinese dead. The Chinese practiced a cult of the family’s ancestors within the home. Here, too, after a few generations, the individuality of the deceased faded and joined the collective body of the family’s ancestral spirits. This may reflect the fact that after a few generations, no one could remember their distant ancestors. Only the truly great and unforgettable, like kings and other famous individuals, would likely be remembered and there for exist, as individual spirits.
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At death, the Egyptians thought that the Ba (=soul) and Ka (= life force) left the body. The Ka was a person’s life force joined to their body and active throughout life. The Ba, or “soul,” was considered to be a person’s personality. It was represented as a human-headed bird. At death, both the Ka and Ba of the deceased separated from the physical body. Both needed to be sustained by offerings, but first they each had to go on a journey to reach the afterlife. The Ka eventually had to rejoin the body once the dead person was mummified and buried in its tomb. The Ba was not required to reunite with the body; instead, it flew around the world. However, it was required to return and commune with its body once a year. This was celebrated by the living as the Festival of Lights, similar to the modern Day of the Dead in Mexico. The living would light up the cemeteries with lamps and torches and put out food and water so that the returning Bas would be fed, watered, and could find their way to the bodies of the dead in their tombs.
The Ba or “soul” of an Egyptian is a human headed bird hovering over the deceased’s mummified body. Once a year, the Ba had to return to its owner’s corpse.
Preservation of the Body & Burial Goods In order to give the Ka a full afterlife, the body needed to be preserved. During the Predynastic (prehistoric) times, the body was covered in reed matting and in skins and buried in simple pits filled with sand and surrounded by burial goods. The dry sand often preserved these bodies, creating natural “mummies.” The desiccation of these bodies was due to the arid environments, but the Egyptians came to believe that it was necessary for the body to be preserved this way for the spirit to exist. But once bodies were placed in hollow tomb chambers, this natural drying process ceased to happen. Beginning no earlier than the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom (about 2600 BCE), the Egyptians began to dry out and wrap bodies to preserve them a process known as mummification. 5
A naturally preserved mummy from Prehistoric Egypt surrounded by his burial goods. The desert sands dried bodies out and the Egyptians came to believe the body had to be preserved for the deceased to exist in the afterlife.
Mummification was gradually perfected. At first, the bodies were simply wrapped in linen bandages, but they kept disintegrating. Later, bodies were stuffed with linen and then wrapped with linen, but without success. Finally, in the Third Dynasty, the body was covered with salt and left to dry for about 70 days. Next, the dried body was wrapped in linens soaked with scented oils and resins. Finally, resin was poured over the wrappings. Dried resin created a hard shell helping to preserve the body against moisture. Before the body was dried, its internal organs were removed: the liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines. The heart was left in place because the Egyptians believed it was also the person’s mind. The brain was removed by whisking it with a wire and draining the liquefied contents of the skull through the nose. Once removed, the internal organs were dried out and wrapped in linen and were usually placed in a set of four canopic jars to preserve them for the afterlife. Sometimes the dried organs were placed inside the empty body cavity.
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The partially unwrapped mummy of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose IV.
Once the body had been preserved, it needed a “House for Eternity:” it needed a tomb. Prehistoric burials were in oval pits with a mound called a tumulus over top them to protect against jackals. Beginning in the later Predynastic era, the tombs of kings and the elite became more elaborate. Three Main Elements of Egyptian Tombs Each Egyptian tomb had three important elements: (1) A burial chamber or chambers was excavated underground in which the coffin and/or sarcophagus with the body inside was placed surrounded by all the personal goods and burial equipment the person needed. This was then sealed to prevent tomb robbers. (2) A tomb chapel served as a kind of temple for the spirit of the dead. Here the funerary priest and the deceased’s relatives would come to make offerings to his spirit on a daily basis and during festivals. (3) There was usually some kind of superstructure over the tomb to protect the burial and also to symbolize the primordial mound at the beginning of creation. The tomb chapel was often built in front of or inside the otherwise solid superstructure. 7
A typical New Kingdom private tomb of a mid-level official. The chapel area includes a courtyard. The burial chamber has a small vestibule for storage of burial goods. The superstructure is a small brick pyramid. Once the New Kingdom pharaohs stopped building pyramids it became acceptable for non-royals to have pyramids.
Evolution of Tombs in Early Egypt The earliest royal tombs in the cemetery of the town of Abydos in Upper Egypt were subterranean chambers built of mud brick covered with wooden roofs. Over these burial chambers, a large tumulus of mud brick, stones, and plaster was built and a small open air offering chapel was attached. The tombs of high officials also had subterranean burial chambers and with superstructures called mastabas by archaeologists after the Arabic word for a solid brick bench placed outside of traditional homes in modern Egypt. Early mastabas were often large and had elaborately niched facades, but were made of mud brick coated with plaster. Later, during the Old Kingdom, mastabas of officials were usually smaller but often made of stone.
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A typical Old Kingdom mastaba tomb with solid superstructure, an offering chapel and a burial chamber reached through a deep shaft.
Before the Third Dynasty, royal tombs had large mud brick mastabas for superstructures. King Djoser built the first tomb complex built of stone. At first he had a large mastaba, but then ordered his architect Imhotep to place additional mastabas one atop the other until he had a Step Pyramid consisting of six layers like a giant stone wedding cake. During the Fourth Dynasty, pharaohs began building true Pyramids with smooth sides. The burial chambers of these pyramids were usually underground and the simple offering chapel of their ancestors’ tombs was replaced by large, elaborate mortuary temples for worship of the king’s spirit.
Reconstruction of the step pyramid complex of pharaoh Djoser at Saqqara.
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Diagram showing the evolution of Djoser’s step pyramid from a mastaba (dark brown) to a 4level (P1) and finally a 6-level step pyramid (P2). Beneath the pyramid are hundreds of yards of underground chambers that functioned as a kind of palace for the king in the afterlife.
Mortuary Cults in Ancient Egypt When the body had been properly mummified and housed in its tomb, the Ka still needed something to eat and drink. Foodstuffs, such as grain, bread, beer, and meat were often placed in the burial chamber around the deceased to sustain him or her in his/her journey to the afterlife. But, there was a problem: what happened when the food went bad or after the deceased’s ka had consumed all of it? There needed to be some sort of “backup plan” to help sustain the individual. One part of the solution for those who could afford it was to maintain a mortuary cult. Kings and the wealthy established a mortuary cults and mortuary estates as the ultimate backup plan. The dead man’s son would act as his “Ka priest” properly bury him at his funeral and then to feed and take care of his Ka on a daily basis thereafter. Kings created royal funerary estates, large plantation farms and workshops to provide enough food and cloth and other supplies to maintain the Ka’s of the king and other members of the royal family for all eternity. For private individuals, the ka priest should be his son. If he had none, then he could hire a Ka priest to do it. The priest would offer the food first to the Ka of the deceased inside his tomb chapel which the Egyptian’s called a “house of the Ka.” Since the Ka was a spiritual being, it consumed only the spiritual essence of the food offerings. The offerings could then be taken by the priest himself as payment for his
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services. This system of offering cults was a major part of the Egyptian redistributive economy during the Old Kingdom. Eternity is a long time. Even with burial goods and a carefully prepared offering cult, the deceased could still find himself without food and drink for his Ka. The burial offerings would rot or be consumed. The mortuary cult was supposed to be forever, but the Egyptians knew that one day, like a modern retiree’s pension plan, it would “run out.” There was a last line of defense, a kind of “fail-safe backup system” for the well off Egyptian’s “afterlife security system.” Food and drink offerings could be portrayed and described in scenes on the walls of his tomb chapel. Hieroglyphic texts carved on the tomb walls and on the burial equipment described the food offerings the Ka needed daily. Part of this equipment was a “False Door,” a magical doorway between the afterlife and the world of the living. The Ka priest made offerings in front of the false door every day. If the mortuary cult ceased, the representations on the walls could feed the dead magically. Finally, there was a magical incantation inscribed in hieroglyphs on the walls and false door to implore visitors to the tomb to magically to feed the deceased simply by reading the spell out loud. This was called the Plea to the Living: “For you: 1000 loaves of bread, For you: 1000 jars of beer, For you: 1000 ta-wer-cakes which come from the Broad Hall, For you: 1000 sweet things, For you: 1000 cuts of beef, For you: 1000 of everything you can eat and which your heart desires!” If a visitor to the tomb read this incantation aloud, the deceased would be magically supplied with each of these items. Similar magic protected mummified bodies. Tombs and tomb chapels were provided with one or more statues of the deceased. If his mummified body was destroyed, there needed to be a backup so that the Ka could still go to the afterlife. Therefore, carved and painted scenes on the walls and stone and wood statues placed in the tomb acted as substitute bodies. Underworld Books To make the journey to the afterlife, the Egyptians provided books of magic spells and incantations to aid them on their journey. These took the form of instructions to guide the dead on their otherworldly travels and to protect them from harm, a kind of “Hitchhiker’s Guide” to the afterlife. Spells inscribed on the burial chambers of Old Kingdom royal tombs are called the Pyramid Texts and were reserved for pharaohs and some queens. During the Middle Kingdom, similar inscriptions called Coffin Texts were painted on wooden coffins of elite officials who could afford them. During the New Kingdom, these spells became known as the “Book of Coming Forth by Day,” and were written on papyrus scrolls with elaborate illustrations. These papyrus scrolls are called the “Book of the Dead” by Egyptologists although that was not the Egyptian term for them. 11
During the New Kingdom, the pharaohs ceased to build pyramids near ancient Memphis as they had in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The new royal burial ground was in the Valley of the Kings at ancient Thebes. The Valley has a mountain peak that functions as a kind of natural pyramid. The royal tombs were long series of corridors and chambers carved deep into the valley. The walls of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings were inscribed with a new series of Underworld books that described the perilous night journey of the sun god Re and his nightly union with Osiris, the god of the Underworld. Concepts of the Afterlife During more than 3000 years of Egyptian civilization, many different ideas about the afterlife developed at various times and places in Egypt. Some ideas overlapped, others seem confusing and contradictory to us today. The Egyptians, however, had no problem meshing these different ideologies. One early concept of the afterlife likened the dead to the circumpolar stars. These are the constellations in the north part of the night sky including the North Star, the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper. Other stars rise and set in the night sky, but the circumpolar stars are always there. The Egyptians called them “the Indestructible Ones,” which never disappeared and could never be destroyed. This was a powerful symbol of eternal life. Another realm of the dead was the “Field of Reeds.” This Underworld realm was much like the marshy Nile Delta in Lower Egypt.” The lush green vegetation of the Field of Reeds evoked the ideas of freshness and vitality the dead needed in order to be reborn.
The Field of Reeds, the Underworld’s version of the marshy Delta of Lower Egypt.
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The Underworld books in the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings presented an Underworld that was a mirror image of Upper Egypt. A second Nile flowed through a series of dark canyons with sandy shores. This was the route the sun god Re travelled during his nighttime journey. Re’s journey was a dangerous one. He passed through the 12 caverns, one each for the 12 hours of night. Each was entered through 12 gateways that were guarded by ferocious monsters and demons. But the sun god and his traveling companion the king, had to reach the other side in order to be reborn the next day when the sun rises. As Re journeyed through the Underworld, he illuminated each gate. While he traveled, he faced demons and dangers who tried to prevent his passage through the Underworld. A company of gods traveled with him to help fight these monsters. At the end of his nightly journey, Re did battle with his greatest enemy, the demon snake Apophis. Even though the Underworld was dangerous, Re travelled with a company of gods and souls of deceased royalty to help him fight the evils preventing him from moving on. At midnight, at the sixth hour of the night, the sun god Re merged his identity with the dead god Osiris who was the Lord of the Underworld. The union of the two gods helped reinsure their rebirth and that of all the deceased people in the Underworld.
The Ram-headed soul of the Egyptian sun god Re sails through the underworld accompanied by other gods. The nightly journey of the sun was linked to the journey the king made. From the tomb of pharaoh Seti I in the Valley of the Kings.
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Judgment Day: Osiris and the Hall of Truth After death, the Ka and Ba of the deceased made their way to the palace of the god Osiris called “The Hall of the Double Truth.” Before Osiris and a jury of other gods, the deceased was morally judged for his actions during life. The human heart was considered to be the seat of the mind and conscience. It was weighed on a scale against a feather that symbolized Maat (=Truth). If it weighed less than Maat, the person was evil and their heart was tossed to a monster called “the Eater of the Dead.” They would cease to exist. But if they passed the test, they could enter the realm of Osiris, the Egyptian paradise. The Book of the Dead papyri usually have a scene depicting this great judgment in which the deceased always passes the test. Of course, that is what they were paying for when they bought a copy of the Book of the Dead! But what if you had a guilty conscience? Another “backup plan” was to purchase a heart scarab placed over the mummy’s heart. It contained a spell begging the heart not to betray its owner by confessing his sins. Another chapter of the Book of the Dead was called the negative confession. Here the dead would recite before Osiris a list of all the sins he claimed not to have committed in life: “I have not done evil. I have not robbed I have not stolen. I have not killed people. I have not destroyed food offerings. I have not stolen god's property. I have not told lies. I have not stolen food. I have not caused anyone to weep. I have not pretended to be that which I am not. I have not committed adultery. I have not been hot tempered. I have not told lies or withheld the truth. I have not cursed. I have not been violent. I have not cursed a God. I have not stolen food from a child I have not slain cattle sacred to the Gods.” Unlike the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians had a more positive outlook on death. For the good and the just— and for people who could afford magical tools to cover up their misdeeds— paradise awaited that was very different from the gloomy shadow world of the Mesopotamian afterlife. The Egyptians also believed that “you can take it with you:” they buried all their favorite possessions with them to be sure they could use them in the afterlife.
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Judgement of the dead in the Hall of Double Truth from the Book of the Dead. The deceased is led before the gods by the jackal headed god Anubis (far left). Anubis then weighs his heart against the feather of Truth while the Ibis headed god Thoth records the result (center). The falcon-god Horus then leads the innocent man to the god Osiris, ruler of the underworld (right).
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