Indeed, the Egyptians spent vast sums of money erecting many monuments and sculptures to commemorate their god-kings during their lifetimes, as well as building and decorating exquisite tombs to serve as the heavenly kings' eternal residences in the afterlife.

Egyptians believed in the immortality of a person's ka, or life energy, which remained to occupy the corpse after death. As a result, individuals with the means elaborately adorned their graves for the "next life." Archaeologists have unearthed not just stone and metal artefacts in those tombs, but also a plethora of things made from perishable materials that are seldom preserved elsewhere, such as illustrated papyrus scrolls like the Book of the Dead discovered in the tomb of Hunefer.

Hunefer's scroll is a compilation of spells and prayers that must be performed in order to ensure a good afterlife. Hunefer kneels in worship before a row of sitting Egyptian deities at the upper left of the part reproduced here. Anubis, the jackal-headed deity of embalming, escorts the dead toward the chamber of judgment below. The deity then changes the scales to measure Hunefer's heart against a feather, which is the hieroglyph for the goddess Maat's name and a sign for truth and right doing. Because the deceased man's heart weighs less than a feather, he deserves to live forever. Otherwise, Ammit, the crocodile-hippopotamus-lion hybrid who keeps an eye on the weighing, would have devoured Hunefer's heart and he would have died a second time.Thoth, the ibis-headed deity, watches the proceedings from the right.

Finally, after being evaluated favorably by the scales, Hunefer is taken into the presence of the enthroned green-faced Osiris and his sisters, Isis and Nephthys, by Osiris' son, the falcon-headed Horus, to accept the award of perpetual life. This was every Egyptian's purpose, and it was the notion that determined the form and substance of most Egyptian art and architecture from its origins in the fourth millennium bce to many thousand years later.