Salvacin

En este mundo? En otro?

Proceso del salvado
Cmo se alcanza la salvacin? Esta ligada al poder?

Fiestas
-

Los entendidos: Ra, ETA

Cmo se celebraban las fiestas?

En Egipto se conceba la salvacin como una inmunidad de la corrupcin, del cuerpo y la disolucin de la
personalidad en la muerte;
(Brandon, 1975)
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Antropologa de la religion
--

Statues were an essential part of mortuary cults because Egyptians believed that a person could not exist in
the afterlife unless his or herimage in the form of a statue-was preserved among the living. This was a
practical and stunningly simple solution to immortality-as long as the individual was remembered on earth, that
person had not died.
Religion and ritual in Anciient Egypt Emily teeter
-THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
Desde tiempos inmemorables l as personas han celebrado festivales in order to rise above their own
limitations and escape from their dreary lives and light-heartedly share in the essence of human existence. It
breaks the monotony of daily life, kill boredom, provides interruption to the unrelenting burden of never-ending
duties, and consequently gives man a feeling of happiness and freedom. During the festival the participants
are transported into a state of elation and ecstasy and experience a feeling of being carried to the very summit
of spiritual life.

During a religious festival the participants fall back on the archetypal truth of their faith and live in accordance
with the basic idea of their religion. Every religious festival actualizes the archetypal holy period and
consequently becomes a holy period of longer of shorter duration. Originally the calendar had a distinctly
religious function, as it served to indicate when the gods made their true selves an their will known to the
people.
Religious festivals are part of human existence and constitute the highlights and the crises in the rhythm of the
religious life of the community and the indivisul. This rhythm results from the order of cosmic life; sometimes it
springs from the power of the revelation of God in the course of history.
Religious festivals mark the holy events in the course of life: different types
1. Agrarian festivals: which are connected whit agricultural work such as sowing and harvesting
2. Seasonal festivals: which are celebrated e.g. in spring, midsummer and autumn.
3. Calendar festivals: the dates of which depende on the position of the sun, the phases of the moon
and advent of the new year.
4. Family-festivals: which impart a certain cachet to important events in the life of the family
5. Festivals of the dead, during which the memory of the dead is honored at regular intervals.
6. Festivals connected with events in the life of the community which are of escepcional religious
importance, e.g. the accession to the throne of a monarch.
7. Festivals in honor of mythical divine figures.
8. Festivals in commemoration of events in the life of the founder of a religion.

-In constructing a horizon of accomplishment that encompasses a life-time, there are two possibilities. One is
located in another world, where the dead go to prolong their existence. The other denies the existence of such
a world, which in any case is conceived of a realm of shadows in which the dead do not continue to live, but
rather, spend their death, and which in no way functions as a horizon of meaning or fulfillment in this life, for no
comfort or orientation emerges from this concept. All afterlifes are not created equal. The distinction lies in
whether I conceive of the "afterlife" as a realm in which the dead are dead, that is, in which they lead an
existence characterized by the absence of what any culture whatsoever would recognize as life, or whether I
think of it as a realm of everlasting life, in which one is saved, delivered, and possibly even raised up from the
condition of death. The Egyptians, too, were acquainted with the concept of such a realm of the dead, which
they despected in rather somber hues. But they also knew a third, and Elysium, in which a person was saved
from death. Societies that do not recognize such an Elysian afterlife seek a horizon of accomplishment in
history, in the succession of generations, in a posterity in which the horizon of meaning of this-worldly life is
prolonged. Egypt, of course, belongs unconditionally to the first type, to the cultures with positive concepts of
the afterlife, in which next-worldly existence is an intensified one, far from death and near to the divine. Yet it
also striking that the Egyptians apparently staked all on remaining present here, on earth, in the recollection of
posteriorit. Why else would they have built such lavish tombs? So far as we can tell, the Egyptian combined
both possibilities. And not only that, but both possibilities were culturally elaborated in a way that was entirely
unique. We find not only a strong belief, in immortality and an afterlife, but also an equally elaborated concept
of, and hope in, a continued existence through the succession of children and grandchildren, and above all, in
the recollection of posterity.

b) Death Pieced on- to life and Iife Permeated by Death

Egyptians not repress death, but rather devoted a massive amount of care and attention to it. In particular,
death played a role in their lives in two ways: first as source of motivation for a host of cultural efforts, and
second, as an always present possibility of diminishing life, especially through the dissolution of social
relationships. The Egyptians did not define life and death as we do. For them, life and death were quantifiable
entities: one could be more or less alive and also more or less dead or subject to death. Death was always
viewed as something at the end of life, and also as a subjection to death that permeated life, that always
present to the Egyptians and spurred them to investments that were supposed to increase the share of life and
diminish that of death.
C) World of the Living, World of the Dead: Border Traffic and Exclusion
In Mesopotamia, fear of revenants played an important role: the ghost of the dead (etemmu) would haunt this
world if he had not been properly buried or had died a terrible death. Such efars are widespread; there are
societis for which the border traffic between the world of the living and the world of the dead can never be
entirely managed, and for which there are broad areas of wilderness that are closed to culture. In Egypt, such
fears played a rather small role. In the Instruction of Any (wisdom literature), one maxim is devoted to the akh,
a word that we otherwise translate as transfigured spirit, but which in this context unequivocally has the
meaning ghost in the sense of the Mesopotamian etemmu. In Egypt, the rule was that crossings between the
realm of the living and the realm of the dead were subject to strict cultural control.
This distinction between two realms, a realm of the living and a realm of the dead, which in Egypt was also the
realm of the gods, was radically challenged in the context of the Amarna Period, the religious revolution
undertaken by King Amenophis IV/Akhenaten (1360-1340 B.C.E.). This occasion clarified this distinction for
the entire structure of a religion. Akhenatens revolution was the first example of the founding of a religion in
the history. It displayed features of a radical enlightenment as well as of an exclusive monotheism. In the texts
of this period, which profoundly altered Egyptian religion, though it was a brief episode of no more than twenty
years in the entire history of Egypt, there is only one realm: that of the here and now, of the reality lit up by the
sun god. Akhenatens monotheism was a radical doctrine of a single realm. Amarna religion abolished the
afterlife. The dead continue to live, but they dwelled in their tomb, not in the netherworld; by day, they visited
the temples of Amarna in a invisible of altered form, and by night, they returned to their tomb. When Amarna
religion failed and the traditional religion was restored, those aspects of it which Akhenaten had particularly
persecuted and excluded were now placed center stage and elaborated on. Thus, it was at this time that the
genre of books of the netherworld, in which knowledge about afterlife was systemically.
Egypt was one of the cultures of denial, one of the societies that do not accept death and thus, in their concept
of man, draw a sharp boundary between the spirit, immortality, uniqueness, and the remainder of nature. The
Egyptians mummified many kinds of animals in large quantities, and they evidently ascribed immortality to
animals as well. Thus, they cannot have drawn so very sharp a distinction between animal and man. In
response, it must be noted that it matters not so much whether they drew a distinction between man and
animal, but rather that they drew it between the mortal and the immortal, between the perishable and the
imperishable. For the Egyptians, the distinction was different from ours, for them, under certain circumstance,
animals were part of the circle of the immortal, the spiritual, and the imperishable. What is decisive is the fact
that they made the distinction.
Death must have continually preoccupied the Egyptians- with the construction of pyramids for kings and huge
burial monuments for high officials, with the decoration and outfitting of these tombs, cenotaphs, and
commemorative chapels, with the preparation of statues, stelae, offering tables, sarcophagi, wooden coffins,
and Book of the Dead, with the procurement of mortuary offerings and the conducting of mortuary rituals-and

we wonder how a society that so constantly and in so many ways made death the object of all possible actions
supposedly did not accept death. Moreover, as a rule, a high-ranking Egyptian would spend many years of his
life constructing and outfitting a monumental tomb. How can someone who did not accept death invest so
much of his lifetime, not to mention his material, on death?
(Assmann, 2005)