Just call me Cleopatra, everybody, cause I'm the Queen of De-Nile...
The Weighing of the Heart Ceremony
The ancient Egyptians believed that, when they died, they would be judged on their behaviour during their lifetime before they could be granted a place in the Afterlife. This judgement ceremony was called the Weighing of the Heart.
A giant scale would weigh the deceased's heart against the principle of truth and justice (maat), represented by a feather, the symbol of the goddess of truth, order and justice, Maat. If the heart balanced against the feather then the deceased would be granted a place in the Fields of Hetep and Iaru. If it was heavy with the weight of wrongdoings, the balance would sink, and the heart would be grabbed and devoured by a terrifying beast that sat ready and waiting by the scales. This beast was Ammit ('the gobbler'), a composite animal with the head of a crocodile, the front legs and body of a lion or leopard and the back legs of a hippopotamus. Once the heart was devoured, the deceased would cease to exist - an idea which terrified the ancient Egyptians.
Ra or Re The Sun God of Egypt...
Ra was the almost universally-worshipped king of the gods and all-father of creation. A sun god, he was said to command the chariot that rode across the sky during the day. A king, he was the patron of the pharaoh. Ra is the most central god of the Egyptian pantheon.
Ra's position in the pantheon is unusual. He is the only god, apart from Osiris, who is definitely said to be not on the earth. Ra, it is said, is an aging god, still powerful, but too old to deal with his children any longer, so he has gone exclusively to the sky to watch over the world. Horus rules over the earth and the gods in his stead, demonstrating the divine right of kingship.
TheSolar Barge
In order to pass through Duat (the underworld) each night, so that he might rise in the morning, the fiery Ra was compelled to use a boat to avoid being extinguished by the waters. It was Maat, i.e. order, the antithesis of chaos, that guided the course of the boat. At the helm of the boat stood Thoth, representative of the moon, who symbolically stood next to Horus, who, in early egyptian myth, represented the sky, and whose dark eye was the moon. It was Horus who steered.
