The concept of afterlife among Romans and Egyptians

The concept of afterlife existed among many ancient civilizations; perhaps, depending on their needs, it was met as a way of understanding the present or as a way to predict the future. As such, in order to explain unknown phenomenon that impacted their daily life, early tribes, saw natural events as simple as the rain and the wind or birth and death, as supernatural powers related to the gods, demons, the moon , the sun or to other external driving forces. To protect their tribe and to maintain the order within it, they invoked the spirit of deceased ancestors. However, civilizations evolved with time and their beliefs became more complex and profound. For instance, Ancient Romans and Egyptians believed in the afterlife and both civilizations shared this same underlying idea; nevertheless, the preparation of the dead for the next world and their funeral services differed in many ways.

These two civilizations’ strong conviction in the afterlife was expressed through their multifaceted and interesting funeral services and burial rituals. But, unlike the Egyptians that preserved their deceased’s body and placed them in a sarcophagus or coffin, the Romans buried the dead after cremating those bodies. To illustrate their practices, I have chosen two artifacts displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met): a sarcophagus from Ancient Egypt and a cinerary urn from Ancient Roman’s times. Both pieces portray a different way of treating the corpses of their deceased and the preparation for the journey to the other world was, without a doubt, a long and elaborate process.

For Ancient Romans, the physical world was only temporarily and the only purpose of the physical body was to host the soul for a period long enough to develop good physical and spiritual qualities. However, depending on how the person behaved and the crimes committed against society when living in the mortal world, the souls were sent to different places for punishment but this suffering was not perpetual. To prepare the body, they washed the corpse, placed it on a sofa or bed and dressed it with the finest clothes that that individual possessed. In addition, a coin would also be placed under the tongue or on the eyes so he could pay the “ferryman Charon” for rowing him to the land of the dead, an idea inherited from the Greek civilization. Depending on the decease’s family belief, Romans practiced either inhumation which it was the burial or cremation, the burning of the dead body. However, in the middle of the 1st century, cremation became a common practice.

The marble urn I observed at the Met dated from mid 1st – 2nd century A.D. was used to place the ashes of the deceased after the body was cremated and in my opinion, it reinforces the general idea provided in the text book that for the Romans, life in the earthly world was not the real one. From the simplicity of the process used to make the transition from the mortal world to the afterlife, I can deduce that they did not want to wait for the slow decaying of the body and cremation was obviously faster.

To the contrary, Egyptians believed that the person’s physical body was more than a temporary host and it had to remained intact, condition necessary to attain the afterlife. Moreover, they contemplated the idea that a person was the combination of several elements such as, the “ba”, which was the non physical part of the individual and the “ka” which was a universal force shared by all.

To preserve the bodies, Egyptians developed a long and arduous process called mummification. This practice required to perform several steps such as the removal of the brain and internal organs, the cleaning of the body’s cavities with different oils and solutions. Later, the body was laid to dry for more than a month. Although all these steps were crucial for the preservation of the body, the most important one was the weighted of the heart.