How were egyptians ideas about the afterlife reflected in their treatment of the dead?

Answer 1

The aim of mummification was not to preserve a person's body as it had been-in life but to create a new bodythat could last for eternity. The Ancient Egyptians believed that a person was made up of a number of physical and non-physical elements. The body was the physical part.The ka and ba, together with a person's name and their shadow, were the non-physical parts. Mummification was intended to create a body that could continue to house a person's ka and ba.

The ka was a 'life force' sustained by the consumption of food and drink.

In the afterlife it also required nourishment to survive. Food offerings left by the living at the tombs of their ancestors sustained the ka. Depictions of offerings on coffins, tomb walls, or other burial objects magically fulfilled the same function.

The most important characteristic of the ba was its ability to move. It could leave the body and travel through the worlds of the living and of the dead, enabling the dead to participate in both. It was believed that the ba needed to return to the body regularly in order to survive. Particular attention was paid to the external appearance of a mummy to enable the ba to recognise its own body and return to it safely. The body, a combination of ka, ba, name and shadow, was thought to make a person complete in this life and in the next. The dead could only fully enjoy eternal life if all the different parts survived.