<P> The Egyptians had elaborate beliefs about death and the afterlife . They believed that humans possessed a ka, or life - force, which left the body at the point of death . In life, the ka received its sustenance from food and drink, so it was believed that, to endure after death, the ka must continue to receive offerings of food, whose spiritual essence it could still consume . Each person also had a ba, the set of spiritual characteristics unique to each individual . Unlike the ka, the ba remained attached to the body after death . Egyptian funeral rituals were intended to release the ba from the body so that it could move freely, and to rejoin it with the ka so that it could live on as an akh . However, it was also important that the body of the deceased be preserved, as the Egyptians believed that the ba returned to its body each night to receive new life, before emerging in the morning as an akh . </P> <P> Originally, however, the Egyptians believed that only the pharaoh had a ba, and only he could become one with the gods; dead commoners passed into a dark, bleak realm that represented the opposite of life . The nobles received tombs and the resources for their upkeep as gifts from the king, and their ability to enter the afterlife was believed to be dependent on these royal favors . In early times the deceased pharaoh was believed to ascend to the sky and dwell among the stars . Over the course of the Old Kingdom (c. 2686--2181 BC), however, he came to be more closely associated with the daily rebirth of the sun god Ra and with the underworld ruler Osiris as those deities grew more important . </P> <P> During the late Old Kingdom (2686--2181 BC) and the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181--2055 BC), the Egyptians gradually came to believe that possession of a ba and the possibility of a paradisiacal afterlife extended to everyone . In the fully developed afterlife beliefs of the New Kingdom, the soul had to avoid a variety of supernatural dangers in the Duat, before undergoing a final judgment known as the "Weighing of the Heart". In this judgment, the gods compared the actions of the deceased while alive (symbolized by the heart) to Ma'at, to determine whether he or she had behaved in accordance with Ma'at . If the deceased was judged worthy, his or her ka and ba were united into an akh . Several beliefs coexisted about the akh's destination . Often the dead were said to dwell in the realm of Osiris, a lush and pleasant land in the underworld . The solar vision of the afterlife, in which the deceased soul traveled with Ra on his daily journey, was still primarily associated with royalty, but could extend to other people as well . Over the course of the Middle and New Kingdoms, the notion that the akh could also travel in the world of the living, and to some degree magically affect events there, became increasingly prevalent . </P> <P> While the Egyptians had no unified religious scripture, they produced many religious writings of various types . Together the disparate texts provide a very extensive, but still incomplete, understanding of Egyptian religious practices and beliefs . </P>

The role of the dead in egyptian society