Stellar Afterlife

Definition

The stellar afterlife is the Egyptian belief that after death a person rises to a place among the stars, becoming an akh — an "effective spirit." At first this destiny was the king's alone; later it was open to all the justified dead. It is tied above all to the imperishable circumpolar stars (jḫmw-sk, "those that do not perish") and to Sah, our Orion — the celestial form of the god Osiris. It runs alongside the solar afterlife, in which the dead travel with Ra on his nightly journey through the Duat, the underworld.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read the stellar afterlife as one of the two main paths the Egyptian dead could take, the other being the solar-Osirian one. Faulkner translates the key Old Kingdom passages in The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (1969); Wilkinson (Complete Gods and Goddesses, 2003) and Hornung (Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 1999) set out the doctrine; Belmonte and Lull tie the texts to the actual stars — the circumpolar imperishables and Sah-Orion.

In Practice

This belief shapes a large body of Egyptian funerary and astronomical writing. The Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, about 2400-2300 BCE) describe the king rising to the imperishable stars or joining Sah-Orion in the southern sky — the dead person "becomes a star," "takes his seat among the imperishables," "joins his brothers the gods." The Coffin Texts (Middle Kingdom) and Book of the Dead (New Kingdom) extend this to non-royal justified dead. The astronomical ceilings of royal tombs — Senenmut, Seti I, Ramesses VI — make the destiny visible, ringing the burial chamber with the decan and circumpolar figures of the night sky. The choice between destinations carried meaning: the circumpolar stars never set and so stood for eternity, while Sah-Orion, rising and setting, echoed the cycle of death and resurrection.

Historical Origin

The earliest stellar-afterlife passages are in the Pyramid Texts of the late Old Kingdom (about 2400-2300 BCE), translated authoritatively in Faulkner's The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (1969). The belief develops further across the Coffin Texts and Book of the Dead. Modern study: Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (1999); Wilkinson, Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (2003); Krauss, Astronomische Konzepte und Jenseitsvorstellungen in den Pyramidentexten (1997).

Further Reading

• R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
• Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife
• Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt