Yearning for Immortality: The European Invention of the Ancient Egyptian Afterlife

Art historian Nyord (Seeing Perfection) provides an intricate account of how Egyptian mortuary practices have been transformed in the Western imagination to fit Christian archetypes. According to the author, early European scholars selectively mined the works of classical writers such as Diodorus and Servius to explain what ancient visitors to Egypt observed, including mummified bodies, obelisks, and tombs. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scholars attempted to interpret Egyptian practices within a cross-cultural context, but continued to overidentify Judeo-Christian parallels (for example, by using terms like “body and soul” and “eternity” that carried Christian connotations). The translation of the Book of the Dead in 1842 cemented European scholars’ convictions that postmortem judgments (whereby the gods evaluated the “ethical and religious merits” of deceased souls) were central to the Egyptians, and marginalized such concepts as metempsychosis, or the migration of souls, that helped distinguish Egyptian funerary practices from Christian ones. Exploring why Western misinterpretations of ancient Egyptian death practices persist, the author points to an enduring “universal human longing for transcendent, eternal life,” as well as documentaries, film exhibits, and books that reinforce entrenched ideas about the Egyptian quest for immortality. Dense and methodical, Nyord’s history meticulously probes the challenges of cultural transmission. Serious Egyptologists will be edified. (Jan.)