Talk:Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs

Origin of Afterlife Beliefs

This article could be improved by mentioning some sourced theories of how the complex afterlife ideas of the Ancient Egyptians may have evolved.

Afterlives seem to be associated with agricultural or post neolithic civilizations. Most primitive tribes have no concept of a personal afterlife. Additionally many neolithic civilizations do not. For example Greco Roman civilization had no personal afterlife in it mainstream thought outside of mystery religions like Dionysian or Euleusian Mysteries, perhaps influenced by Egypt. As far as I know other near eastern civilizations like Summeria, Akkad, Assyria did not have a well defined personal afterlife. Ancient Judaism did not. Etc. Thus the elaborate Egyptian personal atferlife (as distinguished from reincarnation) although it may seem relatively natural to us from our Christian heritage as Westerners was very unusual for its time. How might such a belief system have arisen? It seems to me some kind of religious revolution probably took place around the time of the founding of the old kingdom where a well defined afterlife was theorised. For what else can explain the sudden appearance of the pyramids at the start of history in the Old Kingdom. They were more motivated by the idea of an eternal pharaoh than a human one. How did a man rise to be considered a God or a messiah for his people? Does anybody have good sources? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:6C65:747F:96BA:AC2E:AFC8:731:CB09 (talk) 23:21, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Merge with Egyptian mythology

In July, User:Lfstevens proposed merging this article with Egyptian mythology but did not state reasons for the proposal. Of course, the connection between ancient Egyptian mythology and afterlife beliefs are clear: they are both ancient Egyptian religious beliefs. When I was writing Egyptian mythology, I considered including a section on afterlife beliefs within that article. But I decided against it, and here is why.

It's difficult to define the scope of Egyptian mythology—see the section of that article titled "Attempts at definition", as well as the section titled "Time". Some Egyptologists say that only narrated stories are myths, and others state that mythology is limited to the primordial past in which the gods ruled on earth. Afterlife beliefs fail both of these tests, as present events like people dying and going to the Duat don't fit into the mythic past, and no Egyptian source gives any kind of coherent narrative about the soul's journey to the afterlife, much less about the vaguely imagined paradise at the end of the road. There are Egyptologists who state that any statement about the gods' nature or behavior is "mythic", but their opinion is not universal, and if the scope of the mythology article were based on that criterion, it would encompass virtually all Egyptian religious beliefs and grow to an unmanageable size.

Merging this article with Egyptian mythology makes less sense than briefly covering this subject there. This article is in bad shape and doesn't give an idea of the vastness of AE afterlife beliefs. The souls of the dead fly up to the sky and dwell among the stars; they wander through the Duat (which is different in every description given of it) and find their way to Osiris to be judged; they stay in their tombs by night and move in our world by day, and they can either help or haunt living people. Dead souls become (or are likened to) Osiris, Ra, Hathor, Khepri, the Bennu bird and a host of other things. They eat all the gods and become more powerful than them; they become the gods' secretaries and do as they are told. And that's ignoring developments over time (adding new beliefs but never, or rarely, discarding old ones) and the distinction between the king's afterlife and those of commoners. Jan Assmann wrote a thick book on this subject, and even it doesn't cover everything—at least not the points on which other experts disagree with him. No offense to Lfstevens, but I believe this is a very viable article on its own. A. Parrot (talk) 23:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose, in case you couldn't tell. A. Parrot (talk) 23:13, 5 October 2012 (UTC)
• Support. This piece is a mere 419 words. The Afterlife section in Ancient Egyptian religion is already longer. Until the present article gets some meat on its bones, it seems like a distraction... Lfstevens (talk) 23:39, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Merge it there, then. It doesn't belong in mythology. A. Parrot (talk) 00:05, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Lack of Citations

As a whole, this article lacks citations. After reading the first two sections, there were only a few citations. However, there was a great deal of information that was not common knowledge and which required a source. Michaelgiunta (talk) 20:19, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

Egyptian life after death believe

The Egyptians believed that after death their spirits would go to the land of death. The land of death was like Earth but better. 113.11.109.193 (talk) 13:50, 14 August 2022 (UTC)