1. Ancient Egypt: Part II
Religion & the Afterlife
Humanities I
Dr. Whitney Vandiver
Redlands Community College

2. Religion
 polytheistic
 centralized around aspects of nature and humankind’s
interaction with it
 ranking system
 officiated by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten)
 ranked Amon Ra/Aten as supreme above other gods
 presented association of all pharaohs with Amon Ra/Aten—
other god associations were individual choice

3. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 representation:
 Amon (Amun, Amen)--ram/ram head/man wearing ostrich-plumed hat
 Ra—hawk head with sun headdress
 Aten—sun (with hands)
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

4. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 jackal/jackal head
 watched over the dead and mummifying process
 priests often wore jackal masks during mummification processes
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

5. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 hawk/head of a hawk/great eye
 son of Isis and Osiris
 lost his eye in a battle after Osiris’s murder,
which was restored later
 protector of Egypt, protector of the living
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

6. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

7. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 woman in headdress shaped like
throne (queen)/cow horns with sun
disk
 wife if Osiris
 often looked at as protective female
with magic spells
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

8. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 mummified man with cone-headdress
 god of the dead and fertility, ruled
underworld
 murdered by brother Set for throne,
resurrected by Isis, father of Horus
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

9. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 woman with head of lion—sun disk
for association with royalty
 sometimes referred to as the
daughter of Amon
 goddess of war, protector of
pharaohs during war
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek

10. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 name changed with Greek influence
 man with ‘set animal’ face and
features
 murderous brother of Osiris
 god of chaos, desert, and storms
 associated with disharmony or
anything disharmonious in Egypt
 Sobek curved snout, rectangle ears, tail (occasionally forked),
and canine-like body

11. Gods
 Amon/Ra/Aten
 Anubis
 Horus
 Isis
 Osiris
 Sekhmet
 Set (Seth)
 Sobek
 head of crocodile with headdress of feathers,
sometimes with sun
 god of the Nile
 live crocodiles were kept in pools in palaces to
protect the king in honor of Sobek

12. Gods
Compare to pg. 56 version regarding dramatic lighting of how internal
carvings and reliefs would have been seen (Pergamon Museum, Berlin).

13. Prayers
 Prayers were said for special occasions to whichever god
applied to the situation, such as harvest, war, or the safety
of the Pharaoh.
 Scrolls of prayers were often included in coffins, thought
to protect and guide the dead in the afterlife.

14. Book of the Dead
 Funerary prayers to prepare the dead for judgment—not one canonical version and
perhaps spells combined individually for different versions
 Some date it as far as ~4000 BC; others date it to early New Kingdom, ~1500 BC;
used until Greek influence, ~50 BC.
 Initially thought to have begun with inscriptions on Pharaohs’ tombs, becoming
available for higher classes and priests toward the Old Kingdom and eventually
available to everyone
 Mostly written in hieroglyphic with some hieratic
 The dead were thought to recite a confession (pg. 53) before Osiris and Isis before
entering the underworld.
 After the confession, the dead’s heart was weighed against the figure of truth to
determine if it was pure or not.

15. Afterlife
 The majority of the idea of the afterlife is drawn from the
Book of the Dead’s prayers and illustrations.
 The path to the underworld
 required multiple encounters with dangerous creatures
 had an Earthly terrain of mountains, rivers, and gates
 could be improved with passages from the Book of the Dead
 The afterlife
 is illustrated as a form of paradisaical life
 joining the gods and his/her parents
 taking on some characteristics of the gods
 manual labor is still required