Book Of The Dead

During a time when Egypt was one of the richest and most powerful civilizations in the world, the most magnificent man-made structures in history were built—the pyramids. The pyramids were tombs built to hold the deceased bodies of the pharaohs of Egypt and to house their spirits in the afterlife. Inside these tombs, the walls were decorated in elaborate paintings. It was a custom for the Egyptians to decorate the walls and ceilings of tombs of the elite. Most of these were supposed to be reliefs but sometimes the lack of quality of the stone which led them to decorate the walls with paintings instead. The subject of tomb paintings were connected with burial rights, scenes of the after world, or the daily procedures that the deceased enjoyed …show more content…
The ceremonial scenes on the walls were enacted on an earthly plane and concern the cult of the individual glorified in death. All the successive stages of the funerary rites, from the purification of the body to its entombment, are represented. The “Book of the Dead” is scrolls buried with the dead that contain paintings and text of the rituals and ceremonies that took place in the mummification process and the bringing of the souls of the dead safely into the after life. Since the prayers, actions, and directives were present in the tomb as word and image, the Egyptian people whole-heartedly believed that they were eternally and perfectly recited and re-enacted for the deceased in the afterlife. One of the most important rituals recorded in these collections of scroll is the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony (see fig1). These rites were performed both on a statue placed in a temple or funerary setting on a mummy before it was sealed into a tomb. The carver’s adze—a sharp tool that looks similar to a modern day hammer—was applied to the inanimate figure’s lips during the …show more content…
The Egyptians believed that the soul went through tests in the after life. The most well known test that is depicted in paintings on tomb walls and in the book of the dead is the “Weighing of the Heart” (see fig 2). This the Egyptian form of judgment. The Egyptians believed that on the judgment day the heart of the dead was weighed on a scale against the feather of truth to determine the fate of its owner in the after life. The feather of truth is an ostrich feather, a symbol of Maat, the god responsible for keeping the cosmos in order. The individual's fate is left up to whether the heart is lighter and therefore pure, or heavier and deserving of damnation. The heart-weighing ceremony was believed to be watched over by the gods Osiris, Maat (truth), Thoth, Anubis and Horus. Anubis weighed the heart while Osiris and the others watched as judges. Those whose heart weighed the same as the feather moved on to the Egyptian equivalent of heaven-the Netherworld. Mummies were sometimes believed to sometimes lie about their sins to win passage to the after life. If the person did bad things in life his heart was heavier and if the person did a lot of good things his heart would be lighter. Those who heart weighed too little or too much disrupted the order of the universe and were condemned to the Egyptian equivalent of hell. They were snatched by a monster that was