Eternity... immortality... is where it all converges for me in ancient Egypt with its monumental beliefs in an afterlife, in religion with its promises of eternal survival.

We know that the Egyptians were preoccupied with the afterlife, but they took it even more seriously than many imagine. Humans, they say, are the only creatures that must live life with the knowledge that one day they’re going to die and our culture is the world of distraction we create around ourselves to shield us from this knowledge. But the Egyptians’ culture did not serve as a mere distraction to the pitiless cruelty of death. Instead their culture came to grips with death in an attempt to overcome its tyranny. The pyramids, the glowing underworlds of the tombs, the Books of Coming Forth By Day, or the Book of the Dead as they called these religious texts - were the results of government-funded research into the ‘first mystery’- death and the afterlife. The early pyramids were like nationally financed space-shots designed to launch the god-king pharaoh into the hereafter. The Egyptians even had maps showing the routes to the underworld painted on the bases of coffins. The unconscious psyche believes in life after death as Carl Jung asserted…

Eternity, immortality. We almost brush against their reality in the monumental stone pyramids, columns and text-covered tombs of ancient Egypt.

Egypt is also the world's greatest outdoor museum!