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Ancient Egyptians Afterlife

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Ancient Egyptian history encompasses the beliefs and rituals followed in Egypt for over three thousand years until the establishment of Coptic Christianity and Islam. The ancient Egyptians had a highly developed view of the afterlife. They considered death to be a stage to the next life. They followed elaborate set of burial rituals for preparing the body and soul for an eternal life after death. These beliefs about the afterlife were heavily focused on the preservation of the body, and this is why embalming and mummification was practiced, to preserve one’s identity in afterlife. The Egyptians celebrated a very sound relationship with the faith, and gods. All kings (pharaohs) were considered to be divine, a belief that had its roots in the myths that gods had ruled Egypt in prehistoric times and that the earliest human rulers were the actual offspring of these divine beings. The king (pharaoh) was an incarnation of Horus, son of Osiris (Mojsov, 2002 ). Therefore, when a pharaoh died, he could be prepared for death and become an "Osiris," the god of resurrection. The gods Osiris and Isis were exalted as the ideal father and mother, and Set (god of chaos) became the personification of evil. Thus they believed that one inherit many other elements from their divine progenitors than physical bodies. In their cosmology, each person was consisting of many elements. They had very complex concept of a soul: The precise meaning of ka, ba, ach (akh), `shm (sekhem), and so on is no longer clear to us. Well-meaning scholars try again and again and again to force the Egyptian idea of the soul into our traditional categories without enabling us to understand even a little of it any better. -- J. J. Poortman, Vehicles of Consciousness - the Concept of Hylic Pluralism Although one cannot be precise, the most common line of thought is

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