The Tale of Sinuhe: and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940-1640 B.C.

For most of the time period from the predynastic and prehistoric 4th millennium BCE to the early centuries of the Common Era, the culture of ancient Egypt rested on a unique array of spiritual beliefs and practices that governed social and personal life. Distinct aspects of Egyptian religious beliefs included their conception of death and the afterlife, the role of the gods in human life, and practices of divination and magic.

Parkinson observes that the Egyptian view of human nature was essentially pessimistic. In the Egyptian cosmos, the gods designed creation to serve humankind, but the forces of chaos continually threaten the order the gods have imposed (204). While the gods are benevolent, the human heart is mutable and can be swayed to work against its own good. Egyptian hierarches institute order from above, making the king the representative of the gods on earth and imbuing him with near-divine status and great power.

The king was associated with the most powerful god, the creator god or sun god, called Ra or Re. Gods were typically depicted with an animal head atop a human body. Other important gods in the pantheon included Osiris, god of the dead, and his wife, Isis. Bastet, a warrior goddess who protected the sun god and king, was portrayed with the head of a cat; Horus, a sky god, had the head of a falcon; and Anubis, a god who helped conduct souls to the underworld, had the head of a dog. Abstract ideals were also personified as deities: The goddess Maat governed truth, and the god Thoth stood for wisdom. Together with the king, the gods protected a cosmos of which Egypt was the center and those outside its borders represented the forces of disorder threatening decay or destruction. Cults headed by priests performed the daily and seasonal rituals that rendered due respect to the god they represented, earning protection in return. Those who wished to enlist the god’s aid might make offerings at the appropriate temple.

The afterlife was an important element of Egyptian belief. This was considered a realm contiguous with the mortal world, located in the west, in which existence carried on after the death of the mortal body. The practice of mummification evolved to ensure that the deceased would have a form in which to navigate the next life, and a tomb gave the deceased a place to dwell. The impressive monuments of Egyptian civilization that have endured for millennia, such as the pyramids, were designed as funerary monuments to house a king and the artifacts he was considered to need for his afterlife. The rituals and observances that would guarantee the deceased’s passage to the afterlife were taken very seriously, or so the poetry suggests.

Sustenance in Egypt centered on agriculture and animal husbandry. Successful crops were ensured each year by the regular flooding of the Nile river, which began beyond Egypt’s borders and flowed north to the Delta, reaching the Mediterranean Sea. Cities were highly developed, while smaller and more rural villages generally followed a more pastoral way of life. Pottery, metal-working, stone masonry, and the arts of painting, weaving, and jewelry-making were all sophisticated arts. Egypt traded frequently with its neighbors to the east, west, and south and held lively commerce with other civilizations around the Mediterranean. The system of society we call ancient Egypt changed when Egypt became a Roman province at the turn of the Common Era, after the death of Cleopatra VII.