LIFE AFTER DEAD IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
Death and afterlife had a big role people’s life at the time of ancient civilizations. If you research on the oldest historical documents you will recognize that afterlife composes the main content. There are lots of tombs which come from ancient times but you cannot find other structures as much as tombs now because most of them disappeared by passage of time. It shows to us; death is crucial topic for ancient times and people give importance to afterlife so they build strong and flamboyant tombs. There are two main sample civilizations which have highly developed view about afterlife, ancient Egyptians and Sumerians.
Ancient Egypt is a good sample for this. Religion is the main and most crucial factor for Egyptians. Their beliefs were based on their observation about life as a process which started on earth, but continued in the next world. Most of thing they do in their life is; to prepare them well to other life. Many of them organize their life to afterlife. They build magnificent structures Pyramids for their kings as tombs. Egyptians believe that correct funeral only guarantees the dead to pass into the afterlife. Their belief is that in order for the soul to pass into the next life, the body must remain intact; therefore, to protect it, they build up the procedures of mummification, preserving bodies after death, usually by the use of chemical substances. The preservation was crucial to moving on to the next world. After that the conserved body would be placed in the pyramid which was considered a vessel that transported the dead into the next world ‘’Egypt had an extremely developed view of the life after death with sophisticated rituals for preparing the body and soul for an endless life after death. Beliefs about the soul and afterlife focused greatly on preservation of the body. This was because they believed that the vitality or double, the Ka, was still associated with the body after death and it was...