It was very important in Ancient Egypt to have a mummified body. You need a preserved body so that your
Ba and Ka, the two pieces of your soul, could find their way home at night back
to your tomb. The ancient Egyptian believed that the afterlife was a real and
beautiful place, where they would spend their days forever in peace and
happiness after their death. Without a body, the Ba and Ka would get lost. And
they would no longer be able to reach the heavenly Land of Two Fields.
The poor placed the bodies of
their dead relatives out in the desert sand. The bodies dried naturally in the
sun. That was a perfectly good system. It assured the dead a place in the
afterlife (provided their heart was light from doing lots of good deeds while
they were alive.)
The rich could afford to be
more fussy. They hired professional mummy makers, to help them look their very
best.
The ankh is a history mystery.
The ankh is a history mystery.
The ankh is an ancient
Egyptian symbol. It looks rather like a key. The ankh symbol was used in
hieroglyphics and in designs. One of the artifacts carefully placed in King
Tut's tomb was an ankh. The ankh must have meant something important to the
ancient Egyptians, and that's all we know. Historians have made a few guesses
at what the Egyptian ankh might have symbolized. Some historians think the ankh
was the symbol for the key that opened the door to the afterlife. Others think
it might have represented the key that turned on the annual flooding of the
Nile each year. Of course, the ankh might not even represent a key.
One
thing we do know. The Egyptians used symbols to represent important things. The
red crown, for example, is the symbol for Lower Egypt. The white crown was the
symbol for Upper Egypt. The lotus flower symbolized rebirth, or the coming of
spring. And the
ankh? It's a history mystery.
