Woo hoo, a proper day off and I decided to take advantage of having become a Friend of the British Museum by taking my girlfriend to see the new exhibition about the Egyptian Book of the Dead. My girlfriend is the luckiest woman in the world. Not only can she see me naked whenever she wants, she also gets to see Museum exhibits for free. Sorry ladies, I am taken. You all had your chance, but you blew it.
I will tell you something though, if the ancient Egyptian religion turns out to have been the correct one then we are all fucked. Because the journey to the afterlife is a perilous and complicated one according to them, and you need to be prepared. The book of the dead is essentially a manual which lets you know what to expect, as well as giving you spells to fight off the crocodiles and snakes and snakes attached to backbones and strange combinations of crocodiles, hippos and leopards that will be waiting for you. It is an incredibly intiricate and complex philosophy of death, so much so that it is difficult to believe it is made up. Why would you create something so specific and convoluted? Thus it must be true and we are indeed all screwed, cos we don't even know the thing we have to say to the leopard headed man with the frond of corn that sits at the first gate on the way to the afterlife or have the scarab to put on our heart to make it look like we haven't done anything wrong, so our heart will weigh the same as an ostrich feather when someone with the head of a dog or something weighs it on a scale. The Egyptians were fucking nuts. And also slightly boringly literal about what the afterlife would be like, essentially pretty much the same was real life, with people having to do agricultural work - though you can get out of that if you take some representations of people with you, who will be made to do your work for you.
Apparently your soul can get killed on the way to the afterlife. Whether when it is killed it then goes to another afterlife is not explained. It seems odd that they weren't worried that original death might be the end, but were terrified that the second death might be.
Still they created some beautiful artifacts and scrolls in pursuit of their beliefs, all of which just got buried in tombs and would still be there if we hadn't disturbed their resting places and put them in museums. Perhaps we have wrecked their chances of getting there or maybe it turns out that the museums were the after lives that they were imagining. It would be hard for them to make sense of this strange world that they would end up in.
Of course now you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who believes in the religion that all these people believed in, but that shouldn't make you conclude that all religions aree equally as made up and ridiculous. It's just the Egyptians who got it badly wrong. Be secure in your stupid beliefs of what you imagine and guess might happen to you when you die. It is a shame that the Egyptians turned out to be probably wrong, because they put more work into their religion than pretty much anyone else that I can think of. If one of the other gods turns out to be the correct one then I hope He or She will appreciate their effort and let the Egyptians into Heaven anyway. Come on God, don't be a prick about it. You probably hadn't even been invented at the time they were getting it wrong. It is a bit harsh to not let them off. In fact, if I was you, I would create a false Egyptian heaven where all the stuff which they were anticipating actually happened. Come on you are omnipotent, so you can do it.
Really worth a visit if you can get to London though and get the special iPod with commentary on it, because it gives loads of extra details. But prepared to battle your way through loads of middle aged middle class people who it turns out are just as inconsiderate as anyone else.
