The Book of Gates was written during the New Kingdom period of ancient Egyptian history. It is one of the many surviving funerary texts from this time period. It describes the passage of an individual through the various “gates” of the afterlife. The book suggests that at each “gate” an individual must pay respect to a certain God before being allowed to continue. It also suggests that some individuals will fail to pay proper respect and will be condemned to eternal torment.

Throughout ancient Egyptian history, Egyptian people wore amulets that were dedicated to various Gods so that those Gods might offer them protection and good fortune. The Egyptians believed that these amulets were important both on Earth and in the afterlife, and so tended to bury rulers with amulets designed to ensure the favor of the Gods and to ward off evil spirits.

Ancient Egyptian art tended to conform to the notions of ancient Egyptian worldview. As such, order and harmony were constant themes. The inundation of the Nile, a precarious and uncertain time in Egyptian life, was never depicted. Instead, the Nile was always depicted as if it were orderly and constant.

The Ancient Egyptian numerical system first developed sometime around 3100 BCE and was in a continual state of evolution thereafter, until it fell out of use around 400 CE. It was hieroglyphic in nature, with each number represented and depicted in pictorial form, and relied upon a base ten system, in which symbols were designated in increments of ten. (For example, the symbol for the number one was a single stroke, number ten was represented by a cattle hobble, and one hundred was shown as a coil of rope.) The Ancient Egyptians had no concept of zero; in fact, they would not come to understand this numerical reality for many centuries. This knowledge was finally transmitted to Ancient Egypt sometime in the mid-eighteenth century BCE, through their frequent trade and travel contacts with Middle Eastern and Asian civilizations.

Many historians consider Imhotep to be the “father” of Ancient Egyptian medicine. Imhotep possessed a wide array of talents; he excelled at dozens of complex subjects and skills, including architecture, medical care, poetry, astronomy, writing, and religious knowledge. He first rose to prominence during the Old Kingdom, in the midst of the reign of the Pharaoh Djoser, who employed him as both his court’s Chief Physician and Chief Architect. He is credited with designing two pyramids: the Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara and the Pyramid of Sekhemkhet. His medical talents were so widely renowned through Egypt that dozens of temples and monuments scattered around the nation bear inscriptions praising his treatments and acts of healing. Although definite proof no longer exists, many historians believe that Imhotep also founded the famous Memphis medical school and/or authored the Edwin Smith Papyrus, a medical scroll detailing how to diagnose and treat many ailments.

A shawabti is a small figurine of a servant. They were generally buried with a deceased ruler (often in large numbers) to serve him in the afterlife. It was expected that the Shawabti would spring to life in the underworld and serve the Pharaoh for eternity. Most Shawabtis were made of wood beginning in the Middle Kingdom (earlier Shawabtis had been made of stone).

The Feast of Opet was an annual festival held in Upper Egypt during the New Kingdom period and later. It celebrated the voyage of the God Amun from the temple of Karnak to the temple of Luxor. The celebration was a procession of ceremonial boats that were carried between the two temples. Boats were an important component of Egyptian ceremony and religious worship because the Egyptians believed that the Sun and Moon sailed across the sky in boats.

Besides perhaps the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Great Sphinx is one of the most majestic and enduring symbols of Ancient Egypt. Although it has been much altered due to the depredations of time and weather, today the Sphinx is as enigmatically compelling as ever. The Sphinx was built sometime during the Old Kingdom and carved entirely out of a single limestone mass. Although neither the name of the architect nor the original name of the monument is known, it is believed that the Sphinx’s face was deliberately styled to resemble the face of the Pharaoh Khafre, for whom the Middle Pyramid was also built. The structure seems to have some sort of connection with the Egyptian deity Horus (the god of the sky and warfare); many later sources reference it as the “Horus of the Horizon” and the “Horus of the Necropolis,” all the while admitting that these monikers are not the monument’s original name.

Ancient Egyptian temple architecture incorporated several very specific elements, all of which were standard due to their assumed religious connotations. Although a variety of decorative motifs and other relatively minor features varied from building to building, each temple had to have a large main gateway, a courtyard surrounded by columns, a hall of columns, and a sacred shrine chamber. Without such elements, by Ancient Egyptian standards, a temple would be not only incomplete, but also unfit for spiritual worship.

A good deal of our understanding about ancient Egyptian culture and religious practices comes from the writings of the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus. Herodotus visited Egypt during the Late Period and wrote extensively about its history. Embalming was a part of the mummification process and is thought to have usually lasted around seventy days.