“This secret yearning for immortality” The modern understanding of ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs has a deep and in some respects surprising history. The ways in which core concepts of the discipline of Egyptology continue to be shaped by its 19th-century origins have been increasingly emphasized in the scholarship of the last decade or so. However, in many cases – with ancient Egyptian mortuary religion as a prominent example – strong expectations were already deeply entrenched prior to the “birth of Egyptology” marked by Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. Consequently, the modern interpretation of the ancient Egyptian afterlife can be understood as the direct result of 19th-century reception of early modern ideas combining classical authors and Christian expectations. In this process, the actual ancient Egyptian evidence played a withdrawn role until well after the conceptual framework had become firmly established, and then tended to be used to fill in details rather than shaping the overall model. https://www.iak.uni-bonn.de/de/institut/abteilungen/aegyptologie/aktuelles-aegyptologie/copy_of_entwined-ethnic-identities https://www.iak.uni-bonn.de/++resource++plone-logo.svg

The modern understanding of ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs has a deep and in some respects surprising history. The ways in which core concepts of the discipline of Egyptology continue to be shaped by its 19th-century origins have been increasingly emphasized in the scholarship of the last decade or so. However, in many cases – with ancient Egyptian mortuary religion as a prominent example – strong expectations were already deeply entrenched prior to the “birth of Egyptology” marked by Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. Consequently, the modern interpretation of the ancient Egyptian afterlife can be understood as the direct result of 19th-century reception of early modern ideas combining classical authors and Christian expectations. In this process, the actual ancient Egyptian evidence played a withdrawn role until well after the conceptual framework had become firmly established, and then tended to be used to fill in details rather than shaping the overall model.