Ancient Religion Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 2

Ancient Religion - Essay Example er could center on a single deity as the entity of his own worship and reverence, without assuming that his own deity was unique The Mesopotamians believed that the afterlife was a dreadful experience, where the dead eats dust and wore feathers as clothing, weeping in the realms of the Netherworld and Ereshkigal. They believed that everything was cyclic, and probably considered life and death as such as well.  The Greeks too believed in a life after death. A special place of bliss, the Elysian Fields, was reserved for the heroes. The souls damned for being evil were sent to everlasting punishment, in the underworld. The soul that was good, was sent to the dominion of the Blessed. The Greek god Hades is identified in Greek mythology as the king of the underworld. The Romans had a comparable belief system about the life after death, with Hades becoming identified as Pluto.  The Egyptians had a very optimistic view of the afterlife.Burying the dead was of religious concern in Egypt, The Egyptians believed that the vital life-force was composed of several psychical elements, of which the most important was the ka. The ka, a duplicate of the body, accompanied the body throughout life and, after death, departed from the body to take its place in the kingdom of the dead. The ka, however, could not exist without the body; every effort had to be made, therefore, to preserve the corpse.  Many religions practiced in modern times too believe in life after death.An afterlife concept that is found among Hindus and Buddhists is reincarnation, as developing humans’ life after life in the physical world that is, acquiring a superior grade of consciousness by means of successive reincarnations. This chain is conceived to lead toward an eventual liberation or ‘nirvana’.