Every spring, the mighty Nile floods large territories for months, giving fertility to the fields, thereby giving rise to a sense of constancy and unchanging cycle of life in the minds of local residents.
In no other civilization has the protest against death found such a vivid, concrete and complete expression as in Egypt. The belief in immortality gave ultimate significance to life itself and to everything that it carried with it.
If it was possible to create on earth such an all-dominating power of Egypt, is it really impossible to perpetuate it, i.e. continue beyond the threshold of death? After all, nature is renewed annually, because the Nile, overflowing, enriches the surrounding lands with its silt, gives birth to life and prosperity on them, and when it goes back, a drought sets in: but this is not death, because then the Nile overflows again.
The hope that death can be dealt with has given rise to a cult that has left its mark on nearly all the arts of ancient Egypt. And since the pharaoh was most concerned about his immortality, the idea of the cyclical nature of life became intertwined with the deified supreme ruler of Egypt. This interweaving also determined the tasks of ancient Egyptian art. Having found their solutions, it changed relatively little.
The idea of growth and maturation, embodied in the god Osiris, prompted the religious consciousness to make him a symbol of the origin of life. Thus, the seed that splits to release the sprout of life has acquired a double allegory of death and rebirth. Then the priests make Osiris the god-protector of the dead.
The sun dies just to come to life. Osiris turns into a torn corpse only for a triumphant recovery. Nature itself presents the idea of a cyclical flow of life.
Believing in their miraculous Resurrection, the Egyptians took with them to the grave everything that they thought might be useful in the afterlife, from beds and couches to hand-held mirrors and perfume bottles. As this custom developed, the rich and powerful began to take with them to the grave the so-called "servants", but not living people, but carvings, which, as they imagined, would take all the care of them in the other world …
The firm belief of the Egyptians in life after death was the strength with which they were able to build structures of such monumental proportions.
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The rising sun was associated with birth and new life. Horus was the god of the rising sun. The sun god at its zenith was Ra. The sun was seen by the ancient Egyptians as a kind of beacon, showing the pharaohs the way to eternal life. After death, the pharaoh's spirit climbed into the sky along the inclined line of the sunbeam. "Let the sky straighten out the rays of the sun for You, so that You ascend to Heaven, like the eye of Ra."
Each reigning pharaoh was considered a living embodiment of the god Horus, a deity depicted as a man with a hawk's head. At the burial of the pharaoh, a prayer was said: "And the hawk flew into heaven, and now another one is in its place." This spell affirms the continuity of events.
The religious structure in ancient Egypt was so firmly entrenched in the minds that Amenhotep IV was cursed after his death for trying to reduce the entire pantheon to the single god Aten, personified in the form of a solar disk. All the buildings erected by his orders were destroyed, even the inscriptions with his name were erased, thereby the memory of him is consigned to oblivion.
In summary, it should be said that the cult of the ancient Egyptians was built around the idea of eternal life. The symbols of this idea are the Nile River and the Sun. Religion gives people the belief that life after death does not end. The deification of the pharaoh helps to strengthen the power in the country and create unique man-made masterpieces.