In contrast to the religions of Western civilization, that of the ancient Egyptians made a very clear distinction between the body and the soul, for the Egyptians believed that "from birth a person was accompanied by a kind of other self, known as the ka which upon the death of the fleshly body, could inhabit the corpse and live on" (Cooney, 56). But for the ka to live securely, the body of the deceased must remain as intact as possible, and in order to accomplish this, the ancient Egyptians developed to vary high art the technique of embalming. Their success in this technique is quite evident and is demonstrated by numerous, well-preserved mummies of pharaohs like Rameses II, princes, princesses, various nobles as well as common people, such as those that worked on the construction of tombs and the Great Pyramid of Cheops. .

             The first requirement for immortality was of course mummification and when this process was complete, the body, especially if that of a pharaoh or some other high-ranking official, would be placed in a tomb along with food and drink, clothing, utensils and other objects necessary for the afterlife. Often, images of the deceased "in the form of sculptures would also be placed in the tomb to serve as a form of identity for the deceased and to act as a substitute for the ka in case the mummy disintegrated" (Terrace, 134).

             Obviously, the deceased was also placed inside a coffin or sarcophagus in order to preserve the body for the afterlife. In regard to the pharaohs, these coffins were often extremely elaborate and were made from gold and special types of hardwood reserved for kings and queens. One of the most splendid of these coffins is that of King Tutankhamen (ca. 1336 B.C.E.) who died at the age of nineteen and was buried in the Valley of the Kings. Remarkably, although tomb looters did manage to break into the tomb complex, they did not plunder the king's sealed inner tomb chamber and when it was opened in 1921 by archeologist Howard Carter, its incredible riches were discovered exactly as they had been left by those who placed them there some two thousand years earlier.