Why Did The Egyptians Preserve The Body After Death? | The Lost Gods | Odyssey

From the time before time was first measured, humankind has pondered the question of God. As the image of that God formed in their minds, so they fashioned it in wood, paint and stone, and housed it in holy places. The ancient world was populated with gods beyond counting. Today, just one god dominates the world of believers. Where have the old gods gone? Our quest is to peel away the layers of time, to examine the civilizations that brought the gods to power and honoured them in art and architecture, and to discover the ultimate fate of the lost gods. Once, this was a sea of waving grass. On that savannah, gazelle grazed, elephants wandered, men hunted. But 7,000 years ago, the climate changed. Egypt today is largely desert, a moonscape blasted barren by the sun. But this wasteland contains a treasure other civilizations would come to covet. The Nile is a thin blue ribbon bordered in fertile green. Egypt is the gift of the Nile. When hunters and herders became farmers, they turned their thoughts to higher things, and the gods were born. They had gods for everything, because they believed the gods guaranteed mayat, stability. When the country united under its king, he became the chief priest. They would call him para, the great house, the pharaoh. He would guarantee the worship of the gods and the life-giving flood of the Nile. But what of the afterlife? The Egyptians believed each person had a soul that survived death, but the soul needed the body preserved so it could live in it and be nourished through it. This belief gave life to the art and architecture of Egypt that is still a wonder of the world today. Where will we find the first hint of the glory of ancient Egypt? Traditionally, the dead left the black fertile earth of the Nile for the red sand of the desert, and we must follow them. Saqqara is a monumental textbook of the art and architecture of the old kingdom and a picture gallery of its religious beliefs. But they were snobbery, even in death. These tombs were for the nobles. This is the remains of a mastaba, a mud brick construction. It marks a transition in Egyptian architecture from reeds, wood, and Nile lime to stone. But the mastabas did not preserve the body. Nobles like Iruqapta organized statues of their relatives to accompany them on their journey to the afterlife. But money couldn't buy immortality. And then they found natron. Every day they washed their clothes with washing soda and cleaned their teeth with bread soda. When they put the two together, they had something that would dry and preserve the body. Egypt had cracked the code of eternal life. Mummification. A combination of the salts in washing soda and bread soda, which made up natron, were applied to the body to remove all moisture and so preserve the mummy of the pharaoh. But the mastaba was much too humble for an eternal pharaoh. It was here at Saqqara that Egypt saw its first pyramid, the stepped pyramid of Joseph. Six mastabas of decreasing size piled one atop the other. But the journey to the beyond was perilous. These are the passwords to the afterlife, carved almost four and a half thousand years ago. Prayers, advice, and magical incantations. Joseph's stepped pyramid was an act of faith, a stairway to the stars for the pharaoh. It was also a prototype for a tomb that would be the artistic and architectural high point of ancient Egypt. And mark its fall. Cairo is a modern capital city, busily engaging with the 21st century. The Giza pyramid complex is almost swamped by a Cairo suburb. The pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu is the largest single building in the history of the world. It stands on a foundation of rock and rises through 203 steps to a height of 147 meters. It weighs six million tons, the weight of all Europe's cathedrals combined. Built over a 20-year period, the entire structure was covered in gleaming limestone slabs, and topped with a gold-covered pyramid capstone. Giza also boasts the best-known piece of architecture in the world, the Sphinx. 57 meters long and facing east to the rising sun, it symbolizes the sun god Ra and his son, the deified pharaoh. The Greeks called it Sphinx. In Arabic, it is Abu al-Hul. A father of fear, it did not defend the ancient kingdom from destruction. Pharaoh Pepi II simply lived too long. Reigning for 90 years, he buried his heirs. And when he himself died in 2181 BC, the kingdom shattered. It was the end of the ancient kingdom and the beginning of something new and startling in the religion of Egypt. Mecca is to Muslims, so Abydos became to the Egyptians. Because Osiris, the god of the underworld, was buried here. Abydos marks a turning point in Egyptian religious thinking. What developed here was the revolutionary belief that each individual was responsible for the life granted them and that the afterlife was open to anyone, pharaoh or farmer. Why? Because Osiris, like Jesus, was the god of resurrection. The resurrection of Osiris was also a guarantee that the pharaohs would last forever through reincarnation. Osiris had come back from the dead and guaranteed the continuity of the pharaohs. According to legend, the murdered king Osiris was resurrected by his wife Isis and guaranteed the continuity of the pharaoh kings. But in this life, it is people, not gods. Political priests would proclaim a god born in secret. Amun became king of the gods in the new capital of Egypt. Amun was now the god and Karnak was his temple. From the 20th century BC, successive pharaohs made their mark here in art and architecture. Karnak became the most powerful religious and economic center in Egypt. Like the Vatican, a state within a state. History is written in stone here. The walls tell the story of daily worship. Two elegant pink granite pillars recalled the unification of upper and lower Egypt in the lotus and papyrus. United in the worship of the gods Amun and Ra. Once a year, during the feast of Opet, Amun-Ra was carried on the Nile to visit his wife and so ensure the regeneration of the crops. If Karnak was the powerhouse of Egypt, then Luxor was its glory. On the Sphinx guards, pharaoh Ramses waits to greet the god. Inside, a forest of 74 papyrus topped columns. How were these great walls built? By putting down a layer of stone and shoring it with a ramp of rubble. As the stone layers reached upward, so the rubble rampart provided scaffolding for the workers. It was decorated from the top down as the rubble ramps were removed. And what glorious decoration. The draftsman stenciled the figure as a guide to the sculptors who etched with copper and bronze chisels. Finally, these were painted with vivid colors. The paint has long gone, sandblasted by the centuries, but an echo of their glory remains. Beyond is a pillared hall of gigantic reed columns with floors once silvered to resemble water and ceilings painted with stars. Death held little mystery for the Egyptians of this era. What really troubled them was the security of the dead. The dead pharaohs would go to the Valley of the Kings in the west to become invisible underground and safe for eternity. The Valley of the Kings was dry and would preserve the body. And it would be protected and served by a small army of guards and priests who lived there. The tombs of the great are all but concealed in this valley. In fact, some are still to be found. The decorations echo those of Giza and Saqqara in their mystery and splendor. It was a cycle of life, death and rebirth, carefully stage managed by the priests, underpinned with symbols, incantations and magic. A cycle they thought would last forever. In the year 1353 BC, the young pharaoh Amenhotep recited this poem to the sun. O God who gives life, the sole God without another beside him, you create the earth according to your wish, you are in my heart. For a 21st century Christian, Jew or Muslim, it's an orthodox prayer. For a 14th century BC Egyptian pharaoh, it was heresy. Amenhotep changed his vision from many gods to one. He changed his name to Akhenaten in honor of the one god Aten. And he revolutionized the art and architecture of Egypt. If the sun was God, then the temple didn't need a roof. So the supporting walls could be less massive. And what of art? Out went the stylized, perfectly proportioned god-like figure of the pharaoh. And in came the pharaoh, once and all, a man like any other. Egyptian art had discovered realism. Like Henry VIII, the reforming Tudor, Akhenaten confiscated the temple treasure. And when the powerful priests tried to combat him, he closed Karnak and Luxor, built a new capital for the new god. Akhenaten reigned just 17 years. Within days of his death, all traces of his god and name were obliterated. The priests of Amun had their revenge. Amun would be restored, but not for long. The Persian empire swept across the desert and engulfed Egypt. The priests beseeched Amun for a savior. Oscar Wilde said, when the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. The savior the gods granted Egypt was a 33-year-old Greek, Alexander. He did push back the Persians, declared himself the son of Amun, and then left Egypt because he had other worlds to conquer. But he also left a Greek general on the throne, the first of the Ptolemy pharaohs. It was the end of the Egyptian dynasty. So what happened to Egypt's religion and its mighty gods? A small island here on the Nile holds the answer. High up in the Nile was a place of pilgrimage from earliest times. But the art and architecture of Philae revealed the new reality. The mighty figure on the pylon is Greek. The Greek notion of space separates the buildings. Greek perspective skews the pillars. The last Egyptian hieroglyphic was written here on the 24th of August, 394 AD. An epitaph for the glory that had been. And there is this, the kiosk of Trajan. A new power was already stretching across the Mediterranean. The Romans were coming. Egyptian religion was founded on stability. But stability easily becomes rigidity. The Nile floods, the crops grow, the pharaohs die and live again. But then the world turned beneath their feet. The whole structure of Egypt, an inverted pyramid balanced on one man, the all-powerful pharaoh, toppled. Preservation and adaptation in religious belief as in archaeology go hand in hand. If the Egyptians had accepted that, perhaps Amun, Hathor and Osiris might not be listed among the lost gods.