Anubis Speaks!: A Guide to the Afterlife by the Egyptian God of the Dead (29 page)

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My people believed in covering every possible angle. That’s why they stuffed their tombs with food and drink and other goods—just in case somebody forgot their names or stopped bringing offerings.

And that’s why they imagined that Ra also brought provisions in the afterworld—just in case they ran through all their tomb supplies. You moderns might have called it “hoarding.” We called it smart.

A Famous Example

King Tutankhamun (or Tut, as everyone knows

him) isn’t famous because he was a great king.

He’s famous because his tomb—stuffed with lots of pretty, shiny things—was discovered. That’s it.

Now, to be fair, he didn’t have enough
time
to accomplish much. Tut died at nineteen after ruling for just nine years. Since he took the throne as a kid, he most likely had several advisors making the big decisions for him.

Originally, Tutankhamun was named

Tutankh
aten
. His father was the rogue king—

Akhenaten—who tried to do away with us gods, claiming that the sun-god Aten (a form of Ra) was the only god Egyptians should worship. He even built a city in honor of this new monotheistic religion. The

“aten” part of Tut’s original name was supposed to prove how committed he was to the new single-god religion.

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