ABSTRACT
The discipline of Egyptology works on the Cultural History (in its broadest sense) of ancient Egypt (3100 BCE – 394 CE). It is thus concerned with a timespan of over 3000 years, which can be easily extended to 5000 years with the multitude of questions regarding antique, classical and contemporary reception, adaption and interpretation. Egyptology thus offers a substantial field for the study of long-term memory processes as well as a considerable testing ground for the application of memory theory on a civilisation not shaped by later classical and/or Western thinking.
Thanks to the comparatively good state of preservation, much can still be said about ancient Egyptian conceptions and interpretations of death, the subsequent afterlife mythology and the corresponding funerary practices. It seems rather obvious that such aspects underwent considerable changes and transformations through the millennia. But differing and even seemingly contrasting conceptions could also exist simultaneously and were dependent on their social background and mythological implication.
It can be deduced that there were no concepts of an underworld whatsoever in the earlier periods of Ancient Egypt. Only with the emergence of rock-cut tombs and the shift of funerary culture to the inside of mountains does an underworld with an own toponomy and mythology begin to emerge, in turn, influencing funerary culture. During the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1069 BCE), one can even speak of several underworlds, whose contexts of usage and dependence on each other are still not fully understood. The most important of these underworlds is described in the Amduat, a text explaining the nightly journey of the sun-god and his divine entourage through the underworld with all its inhabitants, places and dangers. The aim of this journey was to ensure the daily regeneration of the sun. Later, tombs like that of Pharaoh Thutmosis III are constructed and decorated in imitation of the underworld. Subsequently, the deceased was identified with the sun-god and thus rendered able to participate in the daily regenerative solar cycle. In other words, the Egyptian underworld and its relation to the tomb were conceptualized as a means for the deceased to avoid being forgotten and to be close to the Gods.
This chapter focusses on the emergence and transformations of ancient Egyptian underworld mythology in relation to the act of remembering and preserving as it is expressed in tombs. It is argued that shifts in funerary culture influenced the Egyptian mythology concerning the afterlife – and vice versa. At the same time, the chapter examines the necessary modes of transmission, since many of the presented concepts were copied, adapted, complemented and actualized throughout large periods of time. The texts and images are thus themselves already remnants of various long-time memory processes and reconfigurations which resulted in lively and diverse pictures of the underworld long before the first Greeks set their foot into Hades.
