Afterlife: Did you mean...?

For the ancient Egyptians life was a celebration, and so, just as one would want to look one's best at any party, personal hygiene was an important cultural value. The Egyptians bathed daily, shaved their...

To the ancient Romans, everything was imbued with a divine spirit (numen, plural: numina) which gave it life. Even supposedly inanimate objects like rocks and trees possessed a numen, a belief which no...

The Mongol Empire (1206-1368 CE) covered Asia from the Black Sea to the Korean peninsula and so naturally included all manner of religions within its borders, but the Mongols themselves had their own particular religious...

Pets were as important to the Norse of the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) as they were to any other culture, past or present. The Vikings kept dogs and cats as pets and both feature in Norse religious iconography and literature...

The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys is an ancient Egyptian text in which the two goddess-sisters call the soul of the god Osiris to rejoin the living. The poem takes the form of a call-and-response liturgy and...

The land of ancient Egypt was alive with the spirit of the gods. The sun god Ra broke from the darkness every morning in his great boat, bringing the light, and many of the gods watched over the people...

The central cultural value of ancient Egypt was ma'at – harmony and balance – which maintained the order of the universe and the lives of the people. Keeping balance in one's life encouraged the same...

To the ancient Egyptians, death was not the end of life but only the beginning of the next phase in an individual's eternal journey. There was no word in ancient Egyptian which corresponds to the concept of "death" as usually...

The medieval Church informed the people's religious imagination during the Middle Ages (c. 476-1500) and the world was therefore interpreted - even by heterodox Christians - through the Church's lens. Ghosts – referred...

The Nile River was the source of life for the ancient Egyptians and so figured prominently in their religious beliefs. At night, the Milky Way was considered a heavenly Nile, associated with Hathor, and provider...