Comparing Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece

Authors Avatar by zlayaryagenka (student)

Tulin

Ancient Egypt vs Ancient Greece.

Looking back at the past it is no doubt that Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece were really great. They were building their civilizations peace by peace trough centuries. Therefore, each of them had their own culture, religion, architecture and other life foundations. Although, the differences between them are so obvious; there are many reasons to believe that there are several similarities can be seen between Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece in some aspects of people’s life.

Basically Egyptian civilization was the first which created makings of religion and gods; later newcomer civilizations started to borrow some sort of things which led to confusion of cultures even in religion. So did Greek. However, both of civilizations paid much attention for the gods and life after death which concluded in creation of temples and the worship to the gods; this is the instance of the first similarity.  

Majority of Ancient Egyptians believed that death is just beginning of new life out of earthly guises; they believed that was something more than life on earth. Moreover, they believed that after death they will meet with Osiris (the Egyptian god of re-birth) who will decide their future fate (“Egyptian civilization”). There were certain aspects that were attributed to a human: “the attributes of the physical body, the shadow, the name, the spirit (Ka), the personality, spirit or soul (Ba), and immortality or eternity (Akh) and the protection of these attributes was very necessary for the person was to achieve immortality after death” (“Body and Soul”). The Ancient Greeks also had a widely-developed pantheon with many different gods. The Zeus was on the top of pantheon (Olympus); the other gods were submitting to him. Various other gods and goddesses were there for many other things, such as the god of war (Ares) and the goddess of love (Aphrodite). As the Egyptians Greeks also believed that the soul of the person still lives after death; therefore it went into the underworld to be judged by the god of underworld (Hades) (Lefkowitz 30).

Join now!

The reflection of idea “life after death” takes place in the temples that the two civilizations made. Ancient Egyptians created their pyramids and other temples such as the great Ramesseum had which had great importance for them. Similarly for ancient Greek, there is the great Acropolis. The Ramesseum is a temple complex that Ramesses II built between Qurna and the desert. Various historians have referred to this complex of temple as one of the biggest and beautiful temples ever built in Egypt (“The Great Temple of Ramses II”). Overall, it was an extremely large and lavish piece of architecture that ...

This is a preview of the whole essay