In most accounts of the Egyptian afterlife there is no such thing as hell. Instead, unworthy souls are forbidden from entrance into heaven (which the ancient Egyptians called “The Field of Reeds”) and banished into nonexistence.

In ancient Egyptian cosmology, Nu was the name given to the primordial, infinite ocean of creation that existed before the creation of the world. The Egyptians believed that Atum, the God of creation, had lived inside Nu for countless eons before he created the world from nothingness. The concept of “Nu” was an essential component of the Hermopolis interpretation of Egyptian theology.

All of these cities are correctly matched with the God of creation in its theology except Pi-Ramesses. In predynastic and early dynastic times, each Egyptian community had a different interpretation of the creation of the universe. These distinctions carried over into Pharaonic times and each city tended to be associated with the worship of a particular deity, such as Thebes and Amun. Pi-Ramesses was founded during the nineteenth dynasty, much later than the rest of these settlements, and so did not have time to develop an independent religious tradition.

The Ogdoad Gods were worshipped by the ancient Egyptian theologians of Hermopolis. The eight Gods of the Ogdoad are generally presented in four divine pairings, with a masculine and feminine counterpart. Isis and Osiris are the odd ones out on this occasion, because they are drawn from the Ennead school of theology.

While all of these options name rulers of the first dynasty, Qu'a was the last ruler of the dynasty. Qu'a directly succeeded Semerkhet, and Menes was the first, rather than the last, ruler of the first dynasty.

Menes was one of the earliest, possibly the earliest Pharaohs in unified Egyptian history. Most historians credit Menes with uniting Upper and Lower Egypt and founding the First Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Other historians disagree with this hypothesis though and instead credit Narmer with founding the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

At the pinnacle of Ancient Egypt’s power structure were the ruling dynastic families, each of whom were led by a sequence of pharaohs. (These dynasties are comparable to Medieval Western European royal houses.) Each dynasty ruled in turn before being somehow either replaced or overthrown by another dynasty. Most often, each dynasty was internally bound together by familial ties, both blood- and marriage-related, although in several cases (usually in the absence or unsuitability of direct heirs) dynasties were formed on the basis of shared residency within the fortified royal compound. Despite these close ties, however, internal dynastic conflicts erupted rather often; disputes frequently arose over the line of succession and physical violence (including assassination) was not uncommon.

It is impossible to fully understand the leaders of Ancient Egypt without first comprehending the crucial relationship that existed between these pharaohs and the Egyptian deities. The pharaohs’ role as the nation’s top-ranking political figure was deeply intertwined with religious beliefs. Each pharaoh was believed to be the son of the sun god Ra, who endowed each ruler with various divine abilities and charged his royal offspring with preserving the balance between the Egyptians and the entire divine pantheon. As such, the pharaohs were revered both politically and religiously; for a citizen of Ancient Egypt, to oppose a pharaoh was not only to oppose one’s political ruler but also involved challenging the child of a greatly powerful deity.

The oldest known example of Egyptian hieroglyphics can be found on several memorial palettes, which were created to eulogize and memorialize the dead. These palettes have been dated back to 3400 BCE. Historians have been able to trace the development of hieroglyphic writing from this starting date and have discovered that hieroglyphics remained in continual use until around the eleventh century CE. This lifespan of over four thousand years makes Egyptian hieroglyphics the longest-utilized language in known history.

There are more than 700 different hieroglyphs, which are pictographic in nature. Some may have began as early wall paintings. They took the form of animals, weapons, nature and food to name a few.