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The Egyptian World

Decent Essays

Throughout the Egyptian world, embalmers worked to preserve the inner life force that was thought to reside within the body after death. It was common belief that by completing a seventy day process known as mummification, the Ka, this spiritual entity, would be able to live on long after the person died. Because of this, many people of the culture lived modest lives on Earth, saving immense amounts of money and gold for intricate objects that could serve practical and decorative purposes for their tombs. Every step of the preparations was handled with meticulous care as it was believed that life on Earth was limited, while life in the afterlife was eternal. This cultural ideology of eternal life after death is emulated by the statuary of the Egyptian world—especially by the granite pair statue of Nefu and Khemet-setju from Giza, which was found in 1931 on the Harvard University-Museum of Fine Arts Expedition. During the Old Kingdom, artists worked to form statues that could accompany the body within the tomb, and if necessary, serve as alternative dwellings for the Ka.The pair statue, which was created between 2455 BC and 2350 BC in the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, was likely created for this reason. One can identify the gender of the figures by recognizing how Egyptian artists typically depicted males with darker skin than women. This common practice along with the residual red paint on the body of the figure at the right, allows one to conclude that the person on

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