Religions of the ancient world: notions about the soul and the afterlife

All nations of the ancient world had ideas about the afterlife, associated with a  belief in the immortality of the soul. In place of the archaic conception of the soul as a life force, which doesn't have independent form, arose a belief in the existence of the soul after death. Such beliefs often saw the soul continuing to find life after death in the underworld. Gods, who conduct trials of the souls, managed that world. Oftentimes, the gods overcame death and returned to life to administer the underworld, like Demeter and her daughter Persephone, Dionysus in ancient Greek religion, and Osiris in Egypt, the ruler of the world of the dead. In one scene from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Osiris sits on a throne, as Anubis brings him the deceased. The scene depicts a trial, when the soul is weighed to determine its future fate.

The tour continues in the next room.