THE EGYPTIAN AFTERLIFE
The quest for immortality
Ensuring a good life after death was a pressing concern for Egypt’s ancient rulers, whose tombs reached monumental new heights
Have you ever heard of a pharaoh called Khufu?
If you answered that question with a resounding “no”, then the chances are you’re not alone.If you were to write a list of the most celebrated rulers in the ancient world, then Khufu would be little more than an also-ran. Alexander the Great would earn his place near the top of the podium courtesy of his extraordinary feats on the battlefield. Julius Caesar would be there, too, thanks to the role he played in supercharging Rome’s rise to the greatest empire the world had ever known. And who could forget Hannibal’s audacious feat of leading his army (and his elephants) across the Alps?
Poor old Khufu, however, probably wouldn’t get a look-in. Which, in some ways is to do this pharaoh, who ruled Egypt in the 26th century BC, a disservice. For while many of Khufu’s accomplishments have been lost to history, one of them towers quite literally above anything left to posterity by Caesar, Hannibal or Alexander, and that’s the Great Pyramid of Giza.
When Khufu ordered the pyramid’s construction on the western banks of the Nile four and a half millennia ago, he set in train a building project of staggering ambition. Approximately 20 years, 25,000 labourers and 5.5 million tonnes of limestone later, the pyramid stood at 481ft, covering a massive 13 acres. It was the tallest man-made structure on Earth for 3,800 years, surely one of the greatest architectural feats in human history.
But what makes the pyramid even more extraordinary is that Khufu never intended to use it – not while he was alive anyway. For the Great Pyramid was a vast tomb designed to house the pharaoh’s body in death. As a symbol of just how large the afterlife loomed in the imagination of the ancient Egyptians, the Great Pyramid simply can’t be beaten.
But why? What would lead a pharaoh to invest mind-boggling reserves of time and money into the construction of a building that he would never use this side of the grave?
The answer somewhat lies in the life expectancy of the residents of ancient Egypt. Existence could be short and precarious for the people of north Africa 4,500 years ago, even for those who lived lives as gilded as the pharaohs. However, there was nothing short and precarious about immortality. Eternal life was the carrot dangling before those prepared to put in the groundwork while they lived on Earth. And no one put in more groundwork than the pharaohs.
Khufu may have constructed the largest and most elaborate pyramid of them all, but it was far from the first.
Pharaohs had been building tombs with a view to securing a place in the afterlife for many centuries before the Great Pyramid began vaulting skywards. At first, they were flat-topped structures called mastabas. All that changed with the accession of King Djoser in the 27th century BC. Djoser was responsible for the first step pyramid (around 60 metres high and comprising six stepped layers) and had two separate tombs built within his funerary complex, perhaps reflecting his role as the dual king of both Upper and Lower Egypt.
Preventing plunder
Pyramid design became ever more elaborate over the centuries, and so did grave robbers’ attempts to break in and make off with anything they could find.
By the time Amenemhat III designed his tomb in the 19th or 18th century BC, so concerned was he at the prospect of thieves raiding its contents and disturbing his plans to join Osiris, the god of the afterlife, that his pyramid was fitted with a sliding door, false corridors and hidden rooms.
There was a reason that robbers plundered pyramids at every opportunity. Pharaohs believed that everything that was interred with them in their tomb would accompany them on the journey into the afterlife. These were people with expensive tastes. As a result, their tombs were often packed with a staggering array of riches.
Take the tomb of the most famous of all pharaohs, Tutankhamun. It contained more than 50 garments of top-quality linen, not to mention gloves, scarves, headdresses and tunics. Tutankhamun clearly also had a penchant for jewellery – evidenced by the presence of necklaces, pendants, buckles and bracelets. And just to ensure the pharaoh smelled every bit as good as he looked, he was buried with the finest perfume – some of which was still left in an alabaster jar when his tomb was discovered.
Mind, body and soul
As you’d expect from the architect of the Great Pyramid, no expense was spared when Khufu was buried, having been interred with a pair of ships measuring 42 metres long. Experts aren’t sure why Khufu would have wanted to take a couple of barges with him into the afterlife, though some believe they may have been ritual vessels designed to carry the pharaoh with the sun god Ra across the heavens.
Huge barges, the finest linens, sweet smelling perfume…all could improve a pharaoh’s quality of afterlife. But first the pharaoh had to get there – and that meant successfully reuniting the body with the soul. If that wasn’t successfully achieved, then the dead ruler would be cast into oblivion, no matter how many bottles of wine sat in his tomb.
Key to ensuring that the pharaoh’s body rejoined the soul was to stop it rotting – and that meant turning it into a mummy. This would involve the application of a salt called natron – removing all the moisture – and wrapping it in bandages from head to toe.
A priest would also perform an ‘opening the mouth ceremony’ in which he held a ritual instrument such as a serpent-headed blade to the corpse’s face to ensure that he could eat, speak and breathe in the afterlife.
But first, those performing mummification had to deal with the body’s organs. As the brain was considered useless, they removed that with the help of a chisel and a piece of wire. The liver, stomach, intestines and lungs were all deemed worthy of accompanying the pharaoh into the afterlife and so were removed, cleaned in wine and sealed in containers called canopic jars. No such trauma was inflicted upon the heart. This was considered the most important organ of all, for only once it had been weighed against a feather in the underworld would the pharaoh learn if he or she had achieved immortality. As a result, this was left in the body ready for the journey to the other side.
Over the past century or so, archaeologists have found the mummified remains of numerous rulers including Thutmose III (known as the ‘Napoleon of Egypt’ due to his thirst for conquest), Ramesses II (another belligerent leader, whose body showed signs of arthritis and healed injuries), and, of course, history’s famous ‘boy king’, Tutankhamun.
It’s not often that King Tut has to share the limelight with another pharaoh but that was the case in 2021 when Amenhotep I became the first Egyptian ruler to be “digitally unwrapped” via CT scan. The scan revealed that Amenhotep was approximately 5ft 6ins tall, was around 35 years old when he died and, if the rather ghoulish facial image of the pharaoh is anything to go by, had curly hair and slightly protruding teeth.
When he ruled Egypt 3,000 years ago, Amenhotep may have spent countless hours considering what fate awaited him in the afterlife. We can never know what images these musings produced. But you can bet it wasn’t a scanner in Cairo University’s radiology department.
Words: Spencer Mizen
Books of the dead
When it came to navigating the afterlife, Egyptians had a trusty tome to which they could turn
You’ve just died. That’s clearly not great news. And just as you’re thinking that things can’t get any worse, they do. For, no sooner have you breathed your last in the land of the living, than you’re cast into the land of the dead – a dark, fiery underworld guarded by snakes, crocodiles and half-human monstrosities, all attempting to prevent you from reaching the afterlife. Worse still, Apep, the serpent god of destruction, lurks in the shadows waiting to devour your soul. How, you ask yourself, can you possibly navigate your way to the Hall of Ma’at, the goddess of truth and justice – where you can reunite your soul and body and earn immortality – without being cast into eternal oblivion?
As this image proves, the ancient Egyptian concept of the journey into the afterlife was a detailed and forbidding one – and it was laced with peril.
Yet there was a surefire way to mitigate that peril – and that was to carry a Book of the Dead. This was, in short, a papyrus containing magic, prayers and spells that Egyptians believed could protect them from any threat that Ma’at and her evil associates could offer.
The most famous example of such a book (which now resides in the British Museum) belonged to a scribe named Ani, who lived in Thebes in the 13th century BC. Yet the Book of the Dead probably originated from something called the Pyramid Texts, which were inscribed in pyramids from the third millennium BC. The texts were a series of spells and incantations designed to free the soul of the king from the body and help it ascend toward the heavens.
The pharaoh Unas, who lived in the 24th century BC, had no fewer than 283 such spells on the walls of his pyramid, one of which declares: “Ho, Unas! You have not gone away dead: you have gone away alive. Sit on Osiris’ chair, with your baton in your arm, and govern the living.”
