One sees Egyptians for that time the big show in town, nothing could equivilate to those massive super structures which were meant to be the eternal resting places for those kings. The secrets of the priesthood & rituals of immortality were first reserved only for the Pharoah, then later for a fee of course these same ritual burial rites could be had by the nobility, surprise surprise?
Theres always the starting obvious metaphors of the divine , that which is good & life sustaining like the rivers around which civilizations sprang and the sun . Everlasting life, free of disease & suffering a basic aspiration from which all rituals are born, these revolved the same for any tribe you can name, its all there in the history books. Naturally the rules are modified later, changed so heaven is now more accessable to the common man, like the recent 1820s Christian revival movements .
Looking for a new lease on the keys to the kingdom, choose to stress which had been done so many times before, the return of the king which showed how desperate things had become again . But when in doubt & in total confusion break out the old tricks that had worked so many times before? Here's where direct contact with your favorite angel or the old man himself comes in very handy now that the crowd of followers has accepted the new rules will apply. But the new rules were old rules & tactics, the tendency of not wanting to be left behind as old as the human psyche, fear of death & being seperated from loved ones. Of course these 'charmed' ones knew every aspect of that trickery , those nebulous threats & imaginary spaces from the original story, which was never original or very deep in the first place.
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