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The Egyptian concept of an afterlife was a mirror-world of one’s life on earth

Egyptian Mythology was the belief structure and underlying form of ancient Egyptian culture from at least c. 4000 BCE (as evidenced by burial practices and tomb paintings) to 30 CE with the death of Cleopatra VII, the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt.  Every aspect of life in ancient Egypt was informed by the stories which related the creation of the world and the sustaining of that world by the gods.

Egyptian religious beliefs influenced other cultures through transmission via trade and became especially wide-spread after the opening of the Silk Road in 130 BCE as the Egyptian port city of Alexandria was an important commercial center. The significance of Egyptian mythology to other cultures was in its development of the concept of an eternal life after death, benevolent deities, and reincarnation. Both Pythagoras and Plato of Greece were said to have been influenced by Egyptian beliefs in reincarnation and Roman religious culture borrowed as extensively from Egypt as it did from other civilizations.


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