Afterlife: Post-Mortem Judgments in Ancient Egypt and Ancient GreeceAfterlife argues that proper conduct was believed essential for determining one's post-mortem judgment from the earliest periods in ancient Egypt and Greece. Part one examines Plato's eschatological myths regarding conduct as it affects one's afterlife fate. Part two traces the evolution of afterlife beliefs from Homer to the Dramatists and demonstrates that post-mortem reward and retribution, based on one's conduct, is already found in Homer. Pythagoreanism and Orphism further develop the afterlife beliefs that will have such enormous impact on Plato and later Christianity. The third part examines Egyptian religious texts of the 5th to 18th Dynasties for their understanding of virtues and vices that have afterlife consequences. In part four, the relationship between behavior and the afterlife beliefs of both societies are compared. In the earliest periods, the afterlife texts appear to be concerned only with the elite: the king in Egypt's Pyramid Texts and the heroes in Homeric Greece. Nevertheless, we show that, from the earliest times, both societies believed that the gods, primarily Maat in Egypt and Dike in Greece, were responsible for the proper ordering of the cosmos and anyone's violations of that order would reap the direst consequence--the loss of a beneficent afterlife. |
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Afterlife: Post-Mortem Judgments in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece Gary A. Stilwell No preview available - 2005 |
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5th Dynasty Aeschylus afterlife afterlife beliefs afterlife judgment Ancient Egypt Ancient Egyptian appear beneficent afterlife blessed afterlife Blest body Book Cambridge cardinal virtues chapter Chicago claims Clarendon Press Coffin Texts concept conduct and behavior Conduct deserving courage dead death deeds divine Dodds E.J. Brill earlier Early Greek Egyptian Religion Egyptian Texts Empedocles eschatological myths eternal ethical Eumenides Euripides evil father frag gods Gorgias Greece Hades Harkhuf Harvard University Press heaven Heraclitus Hesiod Homer honor Horus ideas Iliad immortal Intermediate Period Isles judged judicial justice later Lichtheim living moral murder myths of Plato Nekyia oaths Odyssey Old Kingdom Olympian one’s Orphic Osiris Oxford passages person Phaedo Phaedrus philosopher piety Pindar Plato Plato’s myths post-mortem pre-natal Psyche Ptahhotep punishment Pyramid Texts Pythagoras Pythagorean reincarnation religious Republic reward says scholars Socrates Sophocles soul spell Suppliants tablets Tartarus tomb trans Translated true earth truth underworld wisdom York Zeus