The Lost Gods: The Egyptians

Description

Is there a God? It’s an eternal question that all ancient civilizations have answered. Not with just one God, but with hundreds of them. Bringing them to life on earth, these civilizations fashioned their images in wood, paint and stone. And built spectacular holy shrines to house them.

So what happened to these Gods? Do powerful faiths just vanish? Can Gods die? Are these once sacred sites the final resting places for long-lost religions? And how can people who believed in so many deities for so long come to believe in just one and sweep the others to extinction?

The Egyptians

The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with divinity, death and the afterlife and reincarnation. Kenneally visits Saqqara, south of Cairo, where the Egyptians learned the technique of mummification and built the first pyramid, an early prototype for the grand monuments of the Giza pyramid complex. He journeys on to explore the ruins at Abydos, Karnak and Luxor, arriving finally at the island of Philae, the site of the last hieroglyphics and a little-known shrine to Egypt’s lost Gods.

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