Ancient Egypt is my favorite civilization because of its complex religious beliefs about the afterlife. What interests me the most about ancient Egypt, is how it seems to have been focused on death more than anything else in the world. They built huge, impressive structures and monuments for the dead, performed lengthy preparations of corpses before they "began their journey to the afterlife" such as mummification, and buried the dead with all the most valuable items in their peoples' possession. Rather than celebrating life, and thanking their gods for their time on earth, they pleaded for comfort and safety in the eternal.
