Ancient Egyptian Religion

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Egypt. One of the most advanced cultures of the past. The Egyptian’s power and influence has reached out across many lands and touched many people for thousands of years. The Egyptians brought us math, science, and a rather advanced perspective of the world around us. They made great leaps in architecture, such as building the Great Pyramids, and developing one of the first written languages, hieroglyphics. Putting all that aside though, one thing that fascinates people of all ages and races, even today, is the Egyptian Religion. What is it all about? How did the Egyptian people apply it to their everyday life? What was mummification, its significance, and what happened after one was mummified? Religion was a large and crucial part of the Egyptian’s everyday lives. Their religion was based on polytheism, or the worship of many gods and goddesses; they did not believe in only one god. Furthermore, their gods, for the most part, took the forms of half human and half animal of some type. Citizens of ancient Egypt believed in many gods all through the Old Kingdom. Some of these gods were Anubis, Set, Osiris, Isis, and Horus. Egyptians worshiped these gods with animal sacrifices and with incense and many demonstrations where citizens bared the image of the god from one place to another. Citizens believed that all of Egypt belonged to the gods, and that the Pharaoh was the ambassador on earth of the gods and so all in Egypt rather belonged to the Pharaoh. (Quirke, S.) For example, Horus, the sky god, had the head of a hawk and body of a human. They considered animals such as the bull, cat, and crocodile to be holy. Their two chief gods were Amon-Ra and Osiris. Amon-Ra was believed to be the sun god and the lord of the universe. Osiris was the god of the underworld. He also was responsible for a peaceful afterlife and has been know for other things. An example of

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