Much of what is known about Egyptian life comes from tombs: paintings, murals and carvings of everyday activities, statues of the tomb owner and his family and animals, food and drink, including “magical menus,” and household equipment and supplies. Detailed wooden models of typical home and farm scenes placed in the tomb-kitchens, breweries, workshops, gardens, and boats-could be magically activated as needed. The houses of the living were recreated in the houses of the dead.
During the Old Kingdom, the companions the king chose to accompany him in eternal life were not permitted to sail the skies with him in the solar boat. They were confined to their tombs, which is why they went to so much trouble and expense to store away plenty of food, drink, and luxury goods. Once the afterlife was opened to all after the Old Kingdom, the king still ascended to the heavens after death. Everyone else was no longer confined to spending eternity in their tombs, and enjoyed the afterlife of their choosing. For the elite, this was comfort and luxury, with the goods they had brought along in their well-equipped tombs-just like the villas and palaces they enjoyed on earth, only better. Farmers and peasants also pictured the ideal afterlife much like earthly life, without the bad parts. In the afterlife’s Field of Reeds it was never too hot, there was no illness or injury, flies did not bite, the inundation was always just right, and grain grew 15 feet high.
The spirits of the dead required daily nourishment. Bakers, brewers, and other ka servants who lived in necropolis villages prepared and served
World History
