Create your own website today!
Update your website
Visit My Chat Room
Popular Popups
Statistics
Refer This Site
To A Friend
Home

Healing Healing
Healing2
Healing3
Why Abandon Hope
Embracing Emptiness
priapus
green
quotes
symptoms
re
dark
beauty
creatures
madam
blackjack
centaur
beauty2
beauty3
banners
tabula
misrule
end
black holes
entities
herotica
satan
sun
soulfire
both
xmas
love
jung
wisdom
missatan
gga
eternity
chaos
souls
roses
illusions
meow
quotables
individuation
death
beyond
she
end2
exegesis
last
prayer
SOUL SONGS
CRYSTAL GAYLE
THE JUDDS
TAMMY WYNETTE
EDDIE ARNOLD
ANNE MURRAY
JIMMINY CRICKET
LEEANN RIMES
JERRY LEE LEWIS
REBA MC ENTIRE
WILLIE NELSON
KITTY WELLS
HANK WILLIAMS
MASTER LIST
joy



Portals to Eternity
Ancestor Worship


  NEW! Poetry and Doll Maker with Galleries!     [Learn About Our Ecommerce]
Graphics Gallery!

The existence of such an elaborate funerary cult at this site is almost predictable, since ancestor worship is attested in Egypt from as early as the third millenium BC. Since prehistoric times the tribes inhabiting the Nile Valley believed that the dead required physical sustenance for their afterlife activities. In practical terms the spirit-food was provided by the deceased's family. The inducement to the living was threefold: to lessen the individual and collective grief; to propitiate, i.e. "to satisfy," the ancestor's imagined needs; to invoke helpful intervention of the satisfied loved-one from the "land of the dead." Over generations there evolved a family-based popular cult of the immortal ancestor involving complex networks of mutual -- even third-party -- arrangements for the provisioning of food and the carrying out of specified rites, especially on the festival days of the Egyptian and later the Greek and Roman calendars.





Essential to the functioning of the ancient cult of the venerated immortal ancestor was the traditional tomb stele, found in many hundreds of Kom Abou Billou. The stelae, as a rule, are framed by some form of architectural structure, the forms and components of which can be directly traced back to the traditional Egyptian temple's columnar entrances. Often found within the columnar porches is an arching, black, ribbon-like motif, centered directly over the head of the figure within the entrance.





Traditional superstitions concerning the potential malevolence of the dead dictated that he or she be approached cautiously, i.e. ritually and at a neutral spot, readily identifiable as such. There, the descendants might draw near but at the same time be magically separated from them, for in Pharaonic as in Graeco-Roman times the dead were thought to fear and respect the living as much as the living respected and feared the dead. The tomb's threshold, guarded by the "Lord of the necropolis" Anubis, contained the summoned spirit in a defined place. In this way the threshold of the tomb's porch was a neutral meeting ground within which the dead were consigned to the spirit world while at the same time the living might respectfully approach.






Source of image and text:
http://www.umich.edu/~kelseydb/Exhibits/PortalsToEternity/Necropolis.html#Cult


Click here to return to
MASTER LIST
http://zwap.to/Anim0n


Anim0n@pacbell.net


Sign Guestbook
View Guestbook

Domain Lookup
         www..
Get www.yourdomainofchoice.com for your site with services!




.

 
Any WordAll WordsExact Phrase
This SiteAll Sites
Visitors: 00835
Page Updated Sat Mar 10, 2001 11:52am EST