Beyond (Ancient Egypt)
| Beyond in hieroglyphics | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
duat dw3t underworld |
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pet pt heaven |
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In ancient Egyptian mythology, the term hereafter encompassed the two areas of heaven and underworld . In the early dynastic period and in the Old Kingdom , the worldview initially consisted only of the two levels of heaven and earth, until the underworld followed as the second level beyond from the first interim period .
Ideas of the afterlife
Early Dynastic Period
From the first dynasty is ivory comb of the King ( Pharaoh ) djet known. The cosmology of heaven and earth is already depicted there in connection with the royal ascension to heaven. The king acted as mediator between the two levels.
The name of the Wadji with the falcon symbol stood between the heavenly plane of the hereafter and the earth of this world. Above him was a pair of wings as a representative of the extraterrestrial celestial sphere, which the falcon god Horus drove through on a solar boat. The falcon and the name of the king registered in the Serech filled the gap between the two regions. Two heavenly supports can be seen on the sides of the ivory ridge.
Old empire
The later pyramid texts refer to the symbolism of the ivory comb. The power of the king was effective on both the earthly and the heavenly plane. This means that the king is on his own level, which should only be described in more detail in writing in the pyramid texts. The difference, however, was that the king did not see himself as Horus, but saw himself as his direct descendant who was endowed with the heavenly Horus powers.
First intermediate period up to the Greco-Roman period
After the collapse of the Old Kingdom, the underworld was added as the second level of the afterlife in the first interim with the private cult of the dead and the theology of the sun god . From the New Kingdom , the oldest occupied royal underworld books come Amduat , port- , caves and Grüftebuch and the Book of the Earth . The Book of the Dead , on the other hand, belonged to the text genre of the private cult of the dead, in which the principle of the two-level hereafter is often mentioned:
"Your Ba in heaven and your corpse in the underworld ... Your ba remains in heaven, your corpse in the underworld, your statues in the temples ... May you die as one who goes to his ka , may your ba rest in the house of Benu ... Your ba in the sky, your corpse under the ground. "
literature
- Jan Assmann : Death and the afterlife in ancient Egypt . Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-49707-1 .
- Susanne Bickel : The connection between the worldview and the state. In: Reinhard Gregor Kratz: Images of Gods, Images of God, Views of the World (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine) . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-16-149886-2 , pp. 79-102.
- Rolf Gundlach : "Horus in the Palace" - legitimation, form and mode of operation of the political center in pharaonic Egypt . In: Werner Paravicini: The housing of power: The space of rule in an intercultural comparison of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the early modern era (communications from the Residences Commission of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, special issue 7) . Christian Albrechts University, Kiel 2005, pp. 15–26.
- H. Roeder: On the wings of Thoth: The crest of King Wadji and its motifs, themes and interpretations in the pyramid texts . In: Mechthild Schade-Busch: Open paths: Festschrift for Rolf Gundlach on his 65th birthday . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1996, ISBN 3-447-03879-9 , pp. 232-252.
Web links
- Hartwig Altenmüller: Concepts of the afterlife (Egypt). In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on May 26, 2012.