Name: How the Afterlife Shaped Ancient Egypt
Uploaded: undefined
Duration: undefined

NOVA

Were ancient Egyptians obsessed with death? That common misconception hides the true relationship between life and death in ancient Egypt. Discover how they thought about death, why they invested so much in life after death, and how their belief in the afterlife shaped Egyptian culture.

Discover why the ancient Egyptians invested so much in life after death.

How the Afterlife Shaped Ancient Egypt

Carlisle Companies

Viking

NOVA Science Trust Logo

Were ancient Egyptians obsessed with death? That common misconception hides the true relationship between life and death in ancient Egypt. Discover how they thought about death, why they invested so much in life after death, and how their belief in the afterlife shaped Egyptian culture.

Discover why the ancient Egyptians invested so much in life after death, and how their belief in the afterlife shaped Egyptian culture.

Discover why the ancient Egyptians invested so much in life after death, and how their belief in the afterlife shaped Egyptian culture.

Ancient Worlds

NARRATOR: The Ancient Egyptians invested vast amounts of wealth and energy preparing for life after death.Their belief of the afterlife built Egypt. That belief made the Egyptian to build pyramids, tombs, and thimbles.NARRATOR: They believe that life continued after death and the tomb was considered the house for eternity. For those who could afford it, the mummified body would have laid to rest inside beautifully decorated tombs.There's the popular belief that the Ancient Egyptians were obsessed by death and that they were only caring about the life in another world. This is of course, definitely not the case. The Egyptians were people like us, so they wanted to live. Mortuary rituals is actually something that helps the living to overcome their sorrow, their grief. What you find in tombs tells you so much about society and about the living.

United States

Northern Mariana Islands

Puerto Rico

American Samoa

Guam

U.S. Virgin Islands

U.S. Minor Outlying Islands

US & Territories

Colossal explosions shake a remote corner of the Siberian tundra, leaving behind massive craters. In Alaska, a huge lake erupts with bubbles of inflammable gas. Scientists are discovering that these mystifying phenomena add up to a ticking time bomb, as long-frozen permafrost melts and releases vast amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. What are the implications of these dramatic developments in the Arctic? Scientists and local communities alike are struggling to grasp the scale of the methane threat and what it means for our climate future. (Premiered February 2, 2022)

In the Arctic, enormous releases of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, threaten the climate.

Arctic Sinkholes

The top half of Jupiter in blue and green against a night sky

A composite image of Jupiter using images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

Explore the cosmos, delve into ancient history, and follow an extreme rescue with NOVA’s most-watched documentaries released in 2022.

NOVA’s most popular science documentaries of 2022

Four bright orange loops brand off of a dark blue blob

A transmission electron micrograph of HIV-1 virus particles (orange) replicating from the plasma membrane of an infected H9 T cell. Credit: NIAID, Flickr

Scientists have cured a handful of people of HIV by piggybacking on treatments they received for blood cancer. But does that bring a widespread cure any closer?

How the Afterlife Shaped Ancient Egypt

Support Provided By

Explore More

The God’s Wife of Amun: Powerful Women in Ancient Egypt

Decoding the Great Pyramid

Egypt's Tombs of Amun

Transcript

Credits

Support Provided By

Explore More

The God’s Wife of Amun: Powerful Women in Ancient Egypt

Decoding the Great Pyramid

Egypt's Tombs of Amun