Afterlife, The
Afterlife When we think about the afterlife today it is easy to categorize the locations after death: Heaven and Hell. As Christians, we have guidelines in which to receive eternal life and we follow the life as Jesus Christ, and according to the Bible, through Him we are saved. Pretty simple to concept, but in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India, the afterlife is not so easy to grasp. Polytheism, pharaohs, and Buddha will all be prevalent in this exploration of the afterlife in ancient civilizations. Mesopotamians also called Sumerians believed that the afterlife was a bleak and dismal existence. It was commonly called the House of Darkness and entitled an eternity in the ground. They were polytheistic and the Gods in which they believed in were said to be just like us. In fact, we were copies of divine models, made in the image of the Gods. They were petty and violent. If the Mesopotamians did not worship correctly the Gods would become angry and punished the people. The punishment often took form of natural catastrophes such as droughts or floods (Adler, 11-12). "To avert punishment, the gods had to be appeased with frequent, costly rituals and ceremonies, which were the responsibly of a Kircher 2 hereditary priesthood" (Adler, 17).
They thought that it was only for the pharaoh and the upper-class, but soon it was democratized to be a place for the commoners. Buddhists goal was to obtain nirvana, which is the Buddhist equivalent of Hindu moksha: release from human life and its woes (Adler, 51). To obtain good kharma, one must follow the code of morals prescribed for one's caste, called dharma (Adler, 48). The people of Egypt had to carry out his wishes or the Gods might not bless the land. In the Four Noble Truths it is said that all suffering is brought on by desire and desire can only be overcome by reaching the state of nirvana (Adler, 51). Karma is the tally of good and bad committed in a given life (Adler, 48) Good karma would promote you to a higher caste in the next life (Adler, 48). As a whole, the Egyptian culture was optimistic and according to The Book of the Dead the afterlife may be secured through your doings or not doings on earth. It was built long after the Sumerian epoch (Adler, 11). The certainty of afterlife was not known, but the best approach was to appease the Gods by making offerings and hope for the best in the afterlife (Adler, 12). The pharaoh's will was law and his wisdom was all-knowing (Adler, 24). All of these religious beliefs became of a way of life for the ancient civilizations, just as Christianity is the basis of human in most of the Western world. Egyptians represented Gods with ferocious animals. The Assyrians were very cruel and thought that they should be worshipped like divine leaders.
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