Egyptian resurrection belief framed cosmic cycles as needing constant human maintenance

Evidence

Egyptians’ belief in resurrection was connected to the goddess Maat, who caused the sun to rise and set each day and the Nile to flood its banks each year and rejuvenate the soil. Maat also caused the dead to be reborn in the next world. However, these cycles of sunset and sunrise, flood and rejuvenation, death and rebirth, had to be continually maintained by the concerted efforts of benevolent supernatural forces, as well as by the pharaohs and Egyptian citizens. Each sunset signaled the death of the sun god Re, who descended into a dark underworld on a cosmic journey. If Re overcame myriad dangers along the way, he was reborn the next day, symbolized by the rising sun. Resurrection resulted from symbolically reenacting Re’s nightly voyage. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 344

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains how Maat underwrote a worldview where death and rebirth were cyclical, not linear, and demanded cosmic upkeep.
• XREF: The idea that cosmic order must be maintained by ritual effort parallels the struggle-serpent myth cycles in the On Sacrifice article.