Instructions for the afterlife from Ancient Egypt reveal a step change in moral psychology, discovers Andrew Robinson.
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Robinson, A. History: How to behave beyond the grave. Nature 468, 632–633 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/468632a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/468632a
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Lucienne Léger
Thank you for this very interesting comment on the exhibition. I read it carefully and discovered that the moral laws which are the base of our modern western civilization date back the ancient Egypt. Thank you for the very nice illustration. I probably will not go to the British Museum, therefore I was happy to read these lines.
Marc Jeanpierre
Ammit the Devourer looks to be a combination of crocodile, hyena (not lion) and hippopotamus.
Stuart Mathieson
Interesting article. Seems to be a reluctance in the (Christian) West to acknowledge the pre-christian origins of religious values. Modern moral psychology shows that an appeal to transcendent principles or authority (in whatever mythical form) is sufficient to motivate other-regarding phenotypes that influences natural selection at the group level. The selfish gene cannot do this.
Stuart Mathieson. Dunedin, New Zealand.
Axel Berger
Who says this was "a new stage in human psychology"? Just because something was not written down before, could not have been for lack of writing, does not mean it did not exist before. In fact experimental evidence of notions of justice and fairness being at least partially innate suggests them possibly to be hundreds of years old or perhaps at least as old as language itself.
Kalo Franky
You know you talking my thing Axel. helpful information