Ancient Egyptian religion was a polytheistic belief system that encompassed contact with the dead, divination and oracles, and magic, which mostly exploited divine instruments and associations. The two essential foci of public religion were the king and the gods, both of which are among the most characteristic features of Egyptian civilization.
The ancient Egyptians held daily services to attend to the statue of the God by washing, clothing, and anointing it with perfumes. The Pharaoh was thought to have direct access to the Gods, and one of his primary duties was to attend to the statue. Ancient Egyptian rituals and ceremonies played a significant role in shaping the culture and traditions of Egypt, including food habits, mourning rituals, celebrations, and superstitions.
Emperortuary rituals were developed to preserve the body, free the soul, and send it on its way. These rituals encouraged the preservation of the cosmic order and the perpetuation of life through rituals that combated the forces of non-existence. The gods were worshipped through mummification and burial practices, which were central to their belief in achieving the highest outcome of life, which was a happy afterlife.
Worship in ancient Egypt primarily took the form of offering rituals to the gods, the king, and the spirits of the dead. In every temple, specially designated persons performed a ritual focused on making offerings of food, drink, clothing, and ointment. The king was almost always depicted as the person offering to the gods, although temple rituals were performed by priests.
The Sed festival, also known as the “jubilee”, was the most important ritual dedicated to the eternal rejuvenation of the living king. While in theory, the king and deities were the sole participants in the daily ritual cycle, in reality, this function would have been served by priests.
📹 THESE Daily Rituals of the Ancient Egyptians Will BLOW Your Mind
Welcome to our channel! In this fascinating video, we delve into the mesmerizing world of the ancient Egyptians and uncover their …
What was the Egyptian sacrifice ritual?
Ancient Egyptian retainer sacrifice was a practice where pharaohs and high court nobility had servants killed after their deaths to serve them in the afterlife. This practice only existed during the First Dynasty, from around 3100 BC to 2900 BC. Egyptians believed in an afterlife, and much of their civilization reflects this. The belief in the ka, or life source, essence, and soul, was central to their beliefs. Egyptians believed that the ka had to have a body to return to, so they mummified their dead.
In case their body did not survive, they commissioned ka statues, which were buried alongside the body and served as a replacement if it decayed beyond recognition. The king’s ka was particularly important in the afterlife, as he held prominent positions in politics and religion. Egyptians saw the afterlife as a continuation of life, with the same activities and social hierarchy. Upper-class Egyptians were concerned about making their life comfortable, and excavated tombs were found to contain food, murals, statues, jewelry, and other items.
Did ancient Egypt have rituals?
The rituals, which include festivals and daily offerings to the god, are comprised of a series of actions that have been preserved on papyri and temple walls. These rituals date back to the mid-2nd millennium BCE and later.
Did ancient Egypt have any traditions?
The Ancient Egyptian civilization was one of the most important in history, and its traditions and practices continue to fascinate the world today. Some of the most lasting traditions from Ancient Egypt include writing, Easter holiday, calendar, surgical instruments, wedding rings, music, social drinking (wine and beer), wrapping the dead body in linen, wrestling, and astrology.
Writing was invented by the Ancient Egyptians, who were the first to use pen and papyrus to register everyday activities. Easter was celebrated by coloring eggs at Easter time. The calendar, divided into 365-day seasons, is still seen in Abydos Temple and Kom-Ombo Temple, with a calendar masterpiece on display at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
Surgical instruments were invented by the Ancient Egyptians for medical operations, and the famous scene of surgical instruments in Kom-Ombo Temple demonstrates similarities between their instruments and modern ones, including forceps for baby delivery. The wedding ring tradition, which involves giving a bride a ring on their wedding day, is still practiced worldwide. Music and dancing played an important role in entertaining and amusing the people in the Valley of the Nobles.
Beer was the official drink of all Ancient Egyptians, while wine was made from grapes and apples. A tomb of a brewer serving an ancient Egyptian court has been discovered in Luxor, where he was considered the “head of beer production”. Wrestling was also a significant sport, with Beni-Hassan Tombs in El Minya City representing the passion of the Ancient Egyptians. Astrology was also a significant aspect of the culture, with the Temple of Dandara containing the famous Zodiac scene featuring the scorpion and other Horoscopic astrology figures.
How did ancient Egyptians practice spirituality?
The Egyptian civilization was characterized by two main foci of public religion: the king and the gods. The king held a unique status between humanity and the gods, participating in the gods’ world and constructing religiously motivated funerary monuments for his afterlife. The most important deities were the sun god, associated with supernatural beings in a solar cycle, and Osiris, the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. Osiris became dominant during the 1st millennium bce, when solar worship was declining.
The Egyptians viewed the cosmos as a realm of disorder, surrounded by the gods and the present world, with the king’s task being to maintain order against disorder. This pessimistic view was associated with the sun god and the solar cycle, which legitimized the king and elite in their task.
Despite this pessimism, the official presentation of the cosmos on monuments was positive and optimistic, showing the king and the gods in perpetual reciprocity and harmony. This contrast reaffirmed the fragile order and was fundamental to a system of decorum that defined what could be shown, in what way, and in what context. Decorum and the affirmation of order reinforced each other.
What are examples of ancient rituals?
Religion can refer to various beliefs, such as belief in gods, life after death, sorcery, rituals, and altered states of consciousness. Archaeologists study ancient religions to identify ritual activity and frequency, such as the presence of images of deities in tombs and animal remains in specific places. Experts have found that the frequency of a social group’s rituals indicates its hierarchical nature.
Rituals involving pain and trauma, both physical and psychological, are less frequent than pain-free rituals and often have an initiatory aspect. These rituals unite groups through resistance, ensuring they can survive any pain or challenge.
Whitehouse uses football as an example to explain the origins and possible reasons for religions’ emergence. Religions emerge to explain unexplained events and serve as amulets for risky feats, similar to how football fans wear amulets and lucky clothing during matches. This metaphor explains the resemblance between religions and their rituals and the psychological fanaticism in football.
Are ancient Egyptians pagan?
The Ancient Egyptians were polytheistic, believing in multiple gods and goddesses who influenced their lives, treatment of others, farming, and beliefs about the afterlife. These gods were so all-consuming that their beliefs grew and changed over time, affecting the evolution of religion. Worship was personalized and localized, with different gods important to different areas and people at different times.
Festivals were held to celebrate these gods, but worship was not just conducted at temples but also in everyday interactions. Living the values personified by the gods was as important as any festival.
What was the daily ritual in ancient Egypt?
Priests at Ancient Egyptian temples performed daily rituals for the statues of gods, treating them as living people. These rituals included the “opening of the mouth”, where priests offered food, clothed the statues in clean linen and jewelry, and applied new makeup. These rituals were performed in sanctuaries, only accessible to priests and pharaohs, and sometimes on mummies.
The daily acts of worship performed by priests were essentially the same for various gods, such as Amun, Isis, Ptah, or the deceased. Fresh rouge and robes were placed on the statues, and the sacred chapel was cleansed and filled with perfume. The god was considered a human being, whose dwelling needed to be cleaned and assisted by servants.
The ceremonies varied in detail and extent at different sanctuaries, with some having more than sixty ceremonies, while others had only thirty-six. The form and object of worship remained the same, with the priest reciting an appointed formula at each ceremony.
Why do Egyptians avoid stepping on cut hair?
Egyptian traditions are diverse and unique, with some being more traditional than others. For instance, many women in Egypt believe that cutting hair on the floor will cause it to fall for someone and not grow back. To avoid this, they remove any cut hair from the floor. Another unique tradition is turning a slipper back the way it should be, as many Egyptians believe it brings bad luck to the house. This unique experience adds to the uniqueness of the experience and makes it more rewarding.
Egypt is known for its numerous celebrations, including the Sham Ennessim, Abu Simbel Sun Festival, El Hijra, and Mild un Nabi. These festivals are known for their fun and excitement, making them a must-visit destination for anyone visiting the country. Overall, Egyptian traditions offer a unique and rewarding experience for visitors.
Is Egypt the oldest culture?
Scholars generally recognize six cradles of civilization: Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient India, and Ancient China, which are believed to be the earliest in Afro-Eurasia, the New World, and the Caral-Supe and Olmec civilizations in the Americas. All these civilizations depended on agriculture for sustenance, with farmers producing an agricultural surplus to support the centralized government, political leaders, religious leaders, and public works in urban centers.
The term “cradle of civilization” is often used to refer to other historic ancient civilizations, such as Greece or Rome, which have been called the “cradle of Western civilization”. The earliest signs of sedentary culture can be seen in the Levant as early as 12, 000 BC, when the Natufian culture became sedentary and evolved into an agricultural society by 10, 000 BC. The importance of water for a stable food supply and favorable conditions for hunting, fishing, and gathering resources led to an initial wide-spread economy and the creation of permanent villages.
What religion was ancient Egypt?
Egyptian religion was polytheistic, with gods inhabiting the cosmos of a bounded and ultimately perishable cosmos. These gods were not all-powerful nor all-knowing, but had immense power and the ability to live indefinitely, survive fatal wounds, and affect people in various ways. Most gods were generally benevolent, but their favor could not be counted on. They had to be propitiated and encouraged to inhabit their cult images to receive the cult and further the reciprocity of divine and human relationships.
Some deities, like Neith, Sekhmet, and Mut, had strongly ambivalent characters. Seth, for example, embodied the disordered aspects of the ordered world and was seen as an enemy who had to be eliminated but would remain present.
What is Egyptian spirituality called?
Ancient Egyptian religion was a polytheistic religion, with Kemetists acknowledging this polytheism. However, practitioners may elevate one deity to different levels. Traditionalists believe each deity is their own individual being, while others practice henotheism, where they revere many gods but choose to worship one. Monolatry acknowledges many gods but only revere and worship one, while others conceptualize the Egyptian pantheon as a single universal divine force.
In Ancient Egypt, the sun is considered an image of divine power and the source of existence, deified as Ra or Amun-Ra during the New Kingdom. Another important principle of Kemeticism is maat, or order, which was a cornerstone of religious thought. The pharaoh, a divine being, was primarily tasked with bearing responsibility for and contributing to maat. The epitome of the concept in Ancient Egyptian religion was the eponymous goddess Maat and her symbol, the ostrich feather.
📹 The Egyptian Book of the Dead: A guidebook for the underworld – Tejal Gala
Ancient Egyptians believed that in order to become immortal after death, a spirit must first pass through the underworld — a realm …
Love this as an Egyptology student, but with two corrections: To call it the “Underworld” is probably inaccurate. It’s more accurate to refer to it as the “Otherworld”, because the Egyptians didn’t believe in a heaven above, hell below type deal. Instead it was all the same world, except the Duat was only visible to those who had passed on. In regards to the weighing of the heart: some canons insist that the heart must weigh the same as the feather, so the illustration of the heart weighing less than the feather doesn’t speak true of all interpretations. This is because weighing less then the feather somehow implies you are greater than truth (Maat), which is impossible. You need to therefore be at one with Maat by weighing the same. I draw this from Garry J. Shaw’s “The Egyptian Myths”, which I thoroughly recommend to anyone interested in more to do with the Egyptian afterlife and world imagination.
Those who look down on the concept of farming in heaven have never known the bliss of working at least on a small garden of their own. To smell the earth, to watch plants grow, and the satisfaction of producing something to satisfy someone’s hunger is without any equal. In Ancient Rome, the powerful class from the senate to generals aspired to become farmers in retirement. Watch the film the Good Earth from the 30’s, it describes the feeling beautifully.
In my favorite book, American Gods, Shadow Moon meets Anubis. Anubis talks about the weighing-the-heart-against-a-feather thing, and Shadow asks whether people could actually pass the test. Anubis says “Usually; we used a heavy feather.” Much later in the book Shadow comes down with a mild case of death, and meets Anubis again. The simple test is written to be quite suspenseful without being drawn out. The key phrase is this: “Anubis had a heavy feather, but Shadow had a heavy heart.”
Ancient cultures enjoyed the idea of an afterlife, so they created one. It served as an adequate answer for what happens after death, and they wanted to believe that you would still exist after death, so they chose to believe in an afterlife. However, eternal afterlife is more of a curse than a great thing, you would eventually go insane but you can’t simply cease to exist cuz you can’t die twice. If I were Ani, I would have given Anubis a pass, or simply skipped the chance of an afterlife altogether.
The “Book of the Dead” provides a wonderful insight into how a person can understand that the ultimate goal of a man’s life is to happily reap the crops of his good deeds in the afterlife. Ani is the HERO of the “Book of the Dead” and truly what happens after DEATH continues to puzzle mankind since it’s existence. The rest, as we say, is buried in the Court of Ma’at. I will love to explore the full contents of the Book before I die. I need time to prepare the specific codes and magic spells to declare a sin I haven’t committed!
Ani stands before a large golden scale 00:09 where the jackal-headed god Anubis is weighing his heart 00:12 against a pure ostrich feather. 00:15 Ani was a real person, 00:17 a scribe from the Egyptian city of Thebes 00:20 who lived in the 13th century BCE. 00:23 And depicted here is a scene from his Book of the Dead, 00:27 a 78-foot papyrus scroll designed to help him attain immortality. 00:32 Such funerary texts were originally written only for Pharaohs, 00:37 but with time, the Egyptians came to believe 00:39 regular people could also reach the afterlife 00:43 if they succeeded in the passage. 00:46 Ani’s epic journey begins with his death. 00:49 His body is mummified by a team of priests 00:52 who remove every organ except the heart, 00:55 the seat of emotion, memory, and intelligence. 00:59 It’s then stuffed with a salt called natron 01:01 and wrapped in resin-soaked linen. 01:04 In addition, the wrappings are woven with charms for protection 01:08 and topped with a heart scarab amulet that will prove important later on. 01:13 The goal of the two-month process is to preserve Ani’s body as an ideal form 01:18 with which his spirit can eventually reunite. 01:22 But first, that spirit must pass through the duat, or underworld. 01:26 This is a realm of vast caverns, 01:29 lakes of fire, 01:30 and magical gates, 01:31 all guarded by fearsome beasts – 01:33 snakes, crocodiles, and half-human monstrosities 01:37 with names like “he who dances in blood.” 01:40 To make things worse, Apep, the serpent god of destruction, 01:44 lurks in the shadows waiting to swallow Ani’s soul.
Farmer: Toils from dawn to dusk every day of his life to raise the crops he needs to support his family. Finally, on his death bed, he looks forward to enjoying an eternal rest from his labors. Horus: “So hey, welcome to the afterlife, as you’ve probably guessed by now, we were the correct religion. I think you’re really going to fit in here. Here’s your plot of land. Better get to work—these crops aren’t going to tend themselves for eternity!”
The scarab amulet symbolizes letting go of the binary activity of the mind, the notion of any absolute distinction between good and bad. It is only our own thoughts (the conversation between the two halves of the brain) that ‘bear witness’ against us, causing our hearts to remain heavy. We can experience heaven before we die, by practicing at calming the mind, bringing the mind back toward the original trauma of birth, and moving beyond that trauma back toward the pure consciousness we came from. That is what religions call enlightenment, salvation, liberation, awakening, or being ‘reborn’ or ‘born again.’ It’s not really an ‘achievement,’ just a re-awakening to what we already are.
At least the criteria for a good afterlife is being a good person instead of believing in a ‘god’. At least it makes more sense than punishing good people who don’t believe in your religions and rewarding bad people just because they believe in your god (pedophile priests and jihadists anyone?). Seems like ancient Egyptians had a much better sense of moral.
so if the scrab is supposed to help his heart not betray him by selling him out on his sins, the weight of his heart should still be heavy because the sins are still trapped in his heart right? the scrab protects against his emotions to refer back to the incidents of sin and not change the weight of his heart. I would have thought the scrab would help him conceal his sins until it was weighted? Would that cause a discrepancy? What am I missing?
Curiously, the narrator did not mention that “8” of the “10 commandments” were directly plagiarized from these 42 confessions. By all accounts any amateur or scholar with even the most rudimentary knowledge of the subject will tell you that this pre-dates all the Biblical stories…Fortunately, the scroll has survived and in Museums (London and Paris) for all to see. Additionally, Egyptians wrote their negative confessions in stone (pun intended).
It’s interesting because it seems as though in the egyptian afterlife, whether you get to heaven or not as less to do with the question “are you a good person” but rather “are you pious and righteous enough”. The first trial seems to test your religious knowledge, if you know the spells and charms to help you traverse Duat. The second trial seems more to be a test of whether or not you were buried properly than if you’re actually righteous, since the scarab will protect your heart from bearing witness against you. Finally, it’s in the third trial that the actual purity of your heart is tested.
The ancient high priests in esoteric form presenting knowledge we see depicted in the exoteric form of this animation. Without a primer it is just a misunderstood story. With one it is a further enlightening experience that adds to the other gems of wisdom left throughout time that helped create what is now lost culture.
Given that Ani is not in his tomb and is instead in a museum, according to Egyptian beliefs, he is likely lost forever, or no longer existing. The fact that he is still in a British museum when he should be in his tomb isn’t a good thing. It’s like if someone robbed my great grandmother’s grave, admitted to it, but her things on display in their home, and said “well, we want to look at it to learn. We could make copies and learn from those, giving everything back to you, but we don’t want to and we stole it fair and square.”
in 2019 My 15 year old Cat was dying so I did a full recitation of the book of the dead as he lied in sickness he passed away a day later, 4 years after that I walked into the pound and there was my cat looking 12 years younger, he was the first cat i saw and he had been turned in 1 hour before i arrived, he winked at me and meyowed and I took him home, HIs name is HIREM as in Hi remember me.
Ppl actually denounce Christianity in favor of a religion that is NOT equal to all human beings. What if you dont have the money to create a book? What is you have a disability and cant learn and memorize spells and names of gods? What if you cant talk? In Christianity, all we need is faith, which everyone on earth is capable of. Amen!
This is Satanism originating in Babylon with Nimrod/Tammuz and Semiramis! …”Tammuz is the Osiris of the Egyptians; the same with Mizraim, the first king of Egypt, who, being slain in battle, his wife his ordered that he should be worshipped as a god, and a yearly lamentation made for him; and indeed Osiris and Adonis seem to be one and the same, only in different nations called by different names. Mention is made in Plato (d) of Thamus, a king that reigned at Thebes over all Egypt, and was the god called Ammon; no doubt the same with this Tammuz; and who is here called, in the Syriac and Arabic versions, Thamuz or Tamuz; he seems to be the same with Ham; and Egypt was called, the land of Ham, Psalm 105:27″ See Gills Exposition on the entire Bible(Ezekiel 8:14)
cute animation, but they failed to mention the final, ultimate goal of the soul: UNION WITH GOD trough the papyrus Ani is constantly named “The Osiris the scribe Ani”. Ani is Osiris. Ani is Ra: “I am Ra who rose in the beginning, the ruler of this (creation). (…) I sail over the sky, I am Ra, I am Ru. (…) My brow is like the brow of Ra. My face is open. My heart-case is upon its throne, I know how to utter words. In very truth I am Ra himself. I am not a man of no account.” says Ani
“It’s only been a few hours since I’ve translated and spoken aloud the first of the demon resurrection passages from the Book of the Dead.” “And now I fear that my wife has become host to a Candarian Demon. May God forgive me for what I have unleashed unto this earth. Last night Henrietta tried to… kill me.” “It’s now June 18th 6:33 PM. Henrietta is dead. I could not bring myself to dismember her corpse. But I dragged her down the steps… and I buried her. I buried her in the cellar. God help me, I buried her in the earthen floor of the fruit cellar.”