Now I am confused. Was Seti (or Sety) the greatest king of the Egyptians or is he the greatest mummy of the Egyptians. A program on television last night described his mummification as the most sophisticated of any. The mummy is on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The methods used to make his face to look life-like are complex.
His sarcophagus was alabaster. Can you imagine? I saw a picture of it in a British Museum.
All that lavish attention spent towards getting Seti into the afterlife in good shape. What about the regular Egyptians? Did they have an afterlife? Here's one article on the subject:
"The dead had to negotiate a dangerous underworld journey and face the final judgment before they were granted access. If successful, they were required to provide eternal sustenance for their spirit. These things could be achieved if proper preparations were made during a person’s lifetime."
Can you imagine being stuck preparing for your retirement, and then for your afterlife? What a burden. With all our social issues, this seems like we have a much brighter perspective on living and dying.
Here's more:
"The dead were granted a plot of land in the afterlife and were expected to maintain it, either by performing the labour themselves or getting their shabtis to work for them. Shabtis were small funerary statuettes inscribed with a spell that miraculously brought them to life, enabling the dead person to relax while the shabtis performed their physical duties."
And the afterlife is known as the "underworld" - this can't go very well. And it goes into eternity, doesn't it?
“To die, to sleep – to sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there's the rub, for in this sleep of death what dreams may come…”
Hamlet knew a thing or two about the Egyptians - even though everything we know about them came after the Rosetta Stone when their language could be interpreted.
Our picture today comes from an Australian cemetery.
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