and abilities" (Hornung, 1992, p. 97). Properly prepared, the body could "rejuvenate itself" and reverse the vicissitudes of time and aging. The cosmology of the underworld constructed by Egyptian thought contained multiple levels of survivability. At the lowest, darkest level, the underworld was unendurable, and life itself was obliterated. A widely cited article by Gunn explains that at the highest level--nearest the sun--the afterlife/underworld would be experienced as "a creative, transforming power," associated with the restorative powers of the sun/light, that would enable the "whole, intact human being [to] experience reawakening" (Gunn, 1916, p. 89). In the underworld the deceased king would replicate the eternal cycling of the god Osiris, who, like the Nile, was said to be repeatedly die and be reborn.
In pharaonic tombs, the figure of Osiris in the Old Kingdom period was given precedence over the pharaoh "as if it were a title." In later dynasties, Osiris was "placed before the name of each deceased individual" (Hornung, 1992, p. 110). Thus the godhead was gradually incorporated in or infused in humankind, as if spirit and matter were also being fused. The Egyptians' royal experiment in monotheism took place in a later dynasty, during what is called the Amarna Period. According to the pharaoh Akhenaten, godhead was associated with the sun. The same mysterious force that prevented the sun from being totally lost to darkness during its daily journey in the underworld also keep the dead from succumbing to its destructive power (Hornung, 1992). The presence and behavior of the sun was implicated in humans' experience of the gods, which continued to link human potential for rebirth to that of divine and royal experience.
Ancient Greco-Roman culture included a concept of reincarnation symbolized most prominently by the myth of the phoenix rising from the ashes. Some mythological encounters between the gods and human beings res...