Religion in Ancient China and Egypt Essay

Religion has played a precise meaning(a) role in society and the history of mankind for over thousands of years. Origin totallyy sto former(a) by superannuated peoples as a way to explain the unknown, righteousness has greatly evolved and spread across the globe. As new righteousnesss pee formed and spread, the diversity and sameities in the midst of these new organized holinesss have besides increased, oddly due to their geographic locations. Two civilizations in particular with twain similar and distinct religions are ancient China, and ancient Egypt. Ancient Chinese religion and ancient Egyptian religion share many a nonher(prenominal) a(prenominal) things in public with each(prenominal) former(a), yet at the same time they are in any case vastly from one another. Even though on that point are similarities surrounded by many of their paragons, beliefs, ideas, and practices, the differences between the two religions helps clearly separate one from the other , and excessively helps identify their origins.In ancient Egypt, people were constantly faced against indfountainheading disasters, famines, droughts, and plenty of other vivid phenomena. Without an explanation for all of these events, ancient Egyptians had to create an explanation of their own, and by doing so ended up creating their own religion. By creating a religion, these ancient Egyptians were able to provide explanations to each other for these raw(a) phenomena by ma tycoon them appear as if they were actions of the gods. In ancient Egypt, religion became a tool to help the Egyptians go about their daily lives without having to business organization about disaster striking all the time. The Egyptians began to believe that if they honored the gods properly ein truththing would be fine and nothing would go badly for them. One get a line part of the ancient religion was called maat, which was the order of the universe created by the gods at the start of time. Maat was c rucial to the daily life of theEgyptians, and consisted of ideas about truth, justice, and moderation.The Egyptians were polytheistic, and believed in hundreds of diametric gods. Of these gods some were lesser and not as important while others were much important and powerful. The king of the Egyptian gods was called Amen-Re. He was accredited for all soldiery victories, and was one of the most powerful gods. Another very important god in ancient Egyptian religion was Aten the minor sun god. At one point Aten was decreed the whole god in Egypt by the pharaoh Akenhaten and was to be the only god holinessped, however, after his death Egypt returned to worshipping all of its old gods. A few other gods that were important to Egyptian religion were Osiris the god of fertility and the underworld, Isis the goddess of funerals, Anubis the god of embalming and burial, and Thoth the god of wisdom and learning. Along with gods, another important part of ancient Egyptian religion was buria l rituals. Burial rituals held a lot of significance to the ancient Egyptians beca go for they believed that their creates, prayers, and burial ceremonies were designed to reflect and prevail the status of the dead person in their next life.Just equal the people of ancient Egypt, the people of ancient China also apply religion as a way to explain the unknown and rude(a) phenomena that they encountered. People in the Shang Dynasty worshipped many different types of gods as well including weather gods, sky gods, and river gods, however the most powerful god was Shang-Ti. Shang-Ti was the autocratic god who ruled over all of the other gods. Similar to Shang-Ti was Tien, which translates to Heaven, who also ruled over the other gods, but Tien also decided who would be the emperor or empress of China by giving them the Mandate of Heaven. The Mandate of Heaven was the right to rule minded(p) to the emperor or empress from the gods, and it was believed that whenever an emperor or em press lost power it was because Tien had revoked the Mandate of Heaven. period the people of ancient China worshipped many gods, another very important part of ancient Chinese religion was ascendent worship. The people who lived under the Shang Dynasty strongly believed that whenever their sources died, they became similar to gods, and deserved to be worshipped as if they too were gods. Each family inthe Shang Dynasty would not only worship the gods, but would also worship their own ancestors. Along with ancestor worship, during the late Shang Dynasty, people in ancient China also began to use written oracle bones to try to predict the future and also to communicate with the gods.Ancient China and ancient Egypt were both two educate civilizations that created a religion as a way to explain the natural phenomena they encountered and the unknown. Although different in many ways, their religions do share many similarities with each other. One of these similarities is that both of t he religions are polytheistic. In both Chinese and Egyptian religion, there are many different gods, and each god rules in their own do main(prenominal). However, not only do both religions have to a greater extent than one god in them, but also many of the gods from both religions are very similar to each other in the sand that they rule over the exact same thing. For example in ancient Chinese religion there is a sky god, just comparable the sky god in ancient Egyptian religion. Another comparison that both religions have in everyday with each other is that each religion has its own high god that rules above all of the other gods.For the Chinese it is Shang-Ti, the autocratic god who rules above all of the others, and for the Egyptians the supreme god is Amen- Re. Along with similarities between their gods, both ancient Chinese and Egyptian religion also share a lot in commonamongst their burial rituals. In ancient China and ancient Egypt the people held a strong belief in an afterlife after death. Which is why in both ancient China and ancient Egypt, during the of burials of their leaders, pharaohs and emperors were buried with large amounts of treasures and other material items to help prepare them for their next lives. One more comparison between the two religions is that in both ancient China and in ancient Egypt the rulers were viewed as gods. In Egypt the pharaoh was viewed as being the direct descending(prenominal) from the gods and was seen as a god himself. In ancient China the king of the Zhou dynasty was also viewed as the descendent of the spirit god, and was also seen as a godlike figure.While there are many similarities between the religions of ancient Chinaand ancient Egypt, there are also many differences between the two that clearly separate them from each other. One of the main differences between the two religions is the practice of ancestor worship. To the ancient Chinese ancestor worship played an extremely important and essential part in their religion. While the ancient Egyptians did have plenty of respect for their ancestors, ancestor worship did not occur amongst them on the scale that it did amongst the ancient Chinese. Along with ancestor worship, another difference that clearly separates the two religions is in their burial practices. While there are some similarities between their burial practices, there are also differences.One difference between the two burial practices is that the Egyptians favored to preserve their dead because they believed the dead would need their bodies in the afterlife where as the Chinese tended to either bury or cremate their dead. On stature of different burial practices, the ancient Egyptians also spent immense amounts of resources building elaborate pyramids to house their dead pharaohs. Even though the ancient Chinese did build elaborate tombs for their dead emperors, they did not spend nearly as much effort or time as the Egyptians did. Furthermore, the ancient Egyp tians tended to peck out the organs of their deceased before wrapping them up in linens where as the Chinese would wrap up the bodies of their deceased in silk and would not remove the internal organs.Originally used as an explanation for the unknown, religion evolved into a huge part of society. Two societies where religion became a very solid part of daily life were ancient Egypt and ancient China. two of their religions appear to have similar origins, and purposes and share similarities in practices, gods, beliefs, and customs. While there is much in common between the religions of the two civilizations, there are also many differences between the two religions including their worshipping and burial practices. Separated by thousands of miles, these two civilizations created their own religions that held many similarities with each other, but also had significant differences to help clearly separate the two.BibliographyBellah, Robert N. Religion in Human ontogenesis From the P aleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge, MA Belknap of Harvard UP, 2011. Print.Pu, Muzhou. In Search of Personal welfare A View of Ancient Chinese Religion. Albany State University of new(a) York, 1998. Print.Teeter, Emily. Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt. Cambridge Cambridge UP, 2011. 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