Eventually anyone that could save money for a small tomb and a ritualistic funeral could achieve immortality. Later prominent priest, bureaucrats and noblemen were welcomed into the exclusive club. Ordinary and even aristocratic Egyptians were not. During the Old Kingdom it seems that only the pharaohs were privileged enough to enjoy eternal life. Attaining the afterlife was of supreme importance. The notion of an afterlife and judgement was embraced by the ancient Egyptians millennia before it was among Christians. Those judged worthy boarded a boat to paradise while sinners died a second death, their heart eaten by a monster that is part crocodile, part lion and part hippo. "To speak the name of the dead is to make him live again." To speak the name of the dead restores the "breath of life to him who has vanished." So say the inscriptions of ancient Egypt. Reams of literature was devoted to death. The Egyptians believed that life and death was a cycle that was repeated everyday with the coming and going of night and day, the passage of the seasons, the rise and fall of rulers. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus put it this way: “The Egyptians say their houses are only temporary lodgings and their graves are their real houses.” This is why Egyptians bodies were mummified, their tombs were fill possessions for the afterlife and their prayers went out to hundreds deities, all of whom had to be placated with chants, rituals and offerings. Death was regarded as something one must prepare for during life and take care of after death. Historians theorize that because the boy king died so young, and his death was unexpected, his shabti were taken from various collections designed for other people.Ramses IV mummy The Egyptians were obsessed with death and the afterlife, much more so than the Mesopotamians and Greeks. In Tutankhamen's ( King Tut's) tomb, however, the shabti are all different, as if they were taken from other tombs and all mixed up in his. Whichever material was chosen, they generally matched like a perfect set. These little action figures were made out of various materials, depending on the tomb they could be wood, stone, or clay. When explorers uncovered ancient tombs, they found these ushabti arranged all around the tombs, and often right around the coffins, like hundred of tiny action figures! Imagine what they must have thought, seeing all those tiny soldiers, bakers, cooks, farmers, beer makers, fishermen, boat handlers! It's fun to look at shabti because, on occasion, each tiny mummy was carved with special details to show what his or her job was once they arrived in the afterlife. Another possibility is that the mummy design made it absolutely certain that the servant figurines were dead and would go with him. After all, Pharaoh, was a mummy himself at this point. Maybe mummifying them was necessary for them to make the trip. Why? Well, they were headed to the afterlife. The figurines are shaped like tiny mummies. You know, like bake bread, till the fields, tend the cattle, and all the stuff a person needed to do to eat, drink and live happily ever after. They were tiny carved figurines called ushabti or shabti. These shabti figurines were designed to do the work Pharaoh didn't want to do.
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