Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Hey everybody! I am back! Egypt was amazing!!! Its going to take a while for me to get all of you caught up with eveything that we were able to do there because we did a lot. As you can see below our first day to go out in Egypt we went to the 3 great pyramids. They were amazing! It amazed me how they were able to build such massive structures without the modern technology that we have now. I am sure that all of you know that the pyramids were built as tombs to house the Pharoahs mummified bodies. Once someone became Pharoah they would immediatly start on there tombs. The three great pyramids were for 3 Pharoahs that were father, son, and grandson. Each was smaller than the first to show respect for their elders. The biggest pyramid is for the Pharoah Kufu and the second biggest is for his son the Pharoah Khafre, which is what the Sphinx above is also built in the image of. There is a temple that was built next to the Sphinx for Khafre that was built only to be used once for the Pharoah when he passed away. This is where the priests would mummify his body and prepare him for the afterlife. The Egyptians had a very predominant beleif in the afterlife and you can see symbols of it everywhere. The whole process of emballing and mummifing the Pharoahs along with carvings stone statues was to ensure an afterlife for them. They believed that you needed one or the other in order to achieve it. The 3 great pyramids are the most prominant tombs but there are hundreds of them lots in the shape of pyramids and others not which i will explain in a later blog. The Egyptians beleived that after you died you had to go through a judgement. In a quick synopsis once an Egyptian died he would be brought by Anubis the god of the dead to a place where your heart would be weighed on the scale of justice. It is weighted against the feather of Ma'at which is symbolic of truth, justice, balance, righteousness etc. If their heart was lighter than the feather than they would go and become an Osiris. Osiris is a god of the afterlife. So in Mormom lingo in a way they would have eternal life as a god. If there heart was heavier than the feather than there heart would be eaten by the devourers and in a way they would go to what we call hell. Its interesting to see the similarities that the Egyptians had to the belives that we have. The Egyptians are decendents of Noahs son Ham. Ham married outside the covenant and he was denyed the greater preisthood and so was his posterity. They did not have the priesthood to preform any temple ordaninces or anything that involves the greater preisthood. So because they did not have they chose to immitate it. This can be seen in a lot of the things that they did that are similar to things that the Israelites did and even things that we do and believe today. There is not enough time or space to write everything so you will just have to wait until i get home in April sorry!! Just think of all the things that i will have to tell you then!:)

1 comment:

Alyssa said...

thank you thank you thank you for the explanation on the judgement scene. That's the papyrus that I bought in Cairo, two of them infact, but I didn't know the explanation. I posted it awhile ago on my holy land blog. YOu can steal it if you want.

I like your pose in front of the pyramids. ha ha! WHere'd you get it? ha ha

I like your pose in front of the sphinx. Kissing pictures never look good, no matter how many you take!