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Ancient Egypt: Ancient Egyptian
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The ancient Egyptians believed that the heart recorded all of the good and bad deeds of a person's life, and was needed for judgment in the afterlife. After a person died, the heart was weighed against the feather of Maat (the goddess of truth and justice). The scales were watched by Anubis (the jackal-headed god of embalming) and the results recorded by Thoth (the ibis-headed god of writing). If a person had led a decent life, the heart balanced with the feather and the person was rendered worthy to live forever in paradise with Osiris (the god of the underworld).
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Literacy may have been limited to a small percentage of the population, but the large quantity of written material that survives indicates the importance of the written word to the ancient Egyptians. Their hieroglyphs may well represent humankind's earliest attempt to write. The ancient Egyptians developed the use of writing on papyrus, the product of a native plant of the same name that they processed. Many of their documents were used for teaching purposes, and they produced manuals with model letters for apprentice scribes.
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Animals of all kinds were important to the Ancient Egyptians, and featured in the daily secular and religious lives of farmers, craftsmen, priests and rulers. Explore their images in this BBC gallery.
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