Many cultures have complex beliefs about death. Among one of the most interesting are the Egyptians. The Egyptian beliefs about the soul after death are especiallyunique.They believed that when you die and are buried, the things you are buried with pass over into the afterlife with you, which is one of the reasons we see large pyramids with lots of valuables in them. They also believe that if you preserve a person’s body, it will stay physically the same in the afterlife.
One of the things that archaeologists found in many tombs of wealthy people was the Book of the Dead.This book contains many religious spells to help the dead on their journey to the afterlife. The Egyptians believed that you must travel through Duat, which is the Egyptian equivalent of the Greek Plains of the Damned. Peasants travel through Duat in a tomb and only Pharos cross Duat in a boat.
In Duat there are many gates that are manned by minor deities. Each of these deities guards the different gates and will only let those pass through the gates who are willing to tell l them their names. Some translations suggest up to 1,000 of these deities existed guarding an equal number of gates. When the newly dead person finally reaches the end of Duat, they would come to the hall of Maat.
The word Maat means truth, and in this hall there were 42 statues that each represented 42 unforgivable sins. The traveler would name all of the sins that they had committed, and if they did not commit any of the sins then they would then go to a scale and weigh their heart against the feather of Maat (truth). The god Anubis, was often the one to administer this test.
If the heart was balanced then they were admitted to the Kingdom of Osiris, which was essentially the same as the Christian version of heaven. If the person’s heart did not balance against the feather, it would be fed to the god Ammit, who would permanently destroy the soul of the owner and they would completely cease to exist.