Immortality (2 page)

A
LTHOUGH
these four paths explain many mysteries of human behavior, they are also intuitive and straightforward. The first springs most directly from our instincts: like all living systems, we strive to avoid death. The dream of doing so forever—physically, in this world—is the most basic of immortality narratives. I will call this first path simply
Staying Alive
. It sounds unpromising, absurd even, in the face of the basic fact of death and decay. But it is hugely pervasive: almost all cultures contain legends of sages, golden-age heroes or remote peasants who discovered the secret to defeating aging and death.

This narrative is really nothing more than the continuation of our attempts to stay young and healthy, to live that little bit longer—an extra year or two or ten. Those aspects of civilization that provide for our bodily needs—the food supplies and city walls—are the first steps along this route, medicine and hygiene the next. But most civilizations promise much more than merely safe passage to old age: they hold out the hope of an elixir that will defeat disease and debility for good. This promise has sustained whole religions, such as Taoism, and esoteric cults, such as that of the Holy Grail, but it has never been more widespread than today. The very idea of scientific progress is predicated on its delivering ever-extending lifespans, and a host of well-credentialed scientists and technologists believe that longevity liftoff is imminent.

But betting everything on the Staying Alive Narrative is a risky strategy: success rates to date are not reassuring. The second path therefore offers a backup plan: it claims that even if death finds us, we can have a second bite at life’s cherry. This is the
Resurrection Narrative
, the belief that, although we must physically die,
nonetheless we can physically rise again with the bodies we knew in life.

Though not as basic as the attempt to simply stay alive, the hope of resurrection is also rooted in nature: we are used to seeing the natural world die back in winter, only to return with new vigor the following year. Billions of people around the world celebrate this triumph of life over death in spring festivals such as Easter, with its explicit association with the promise of human resurrection. Unbeknownst to many of their followers, the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all also believe in literal, physical resurrection as a central doctrine—a belief that was crucial to these religions’ early success.

But as well as these ancient traditions, versions of resurrection are also gaining popularity among those who would rather put their faith in technology than in gods. Cryonics, for example, in which people pay to be frozen on death in the hope of one day being repaired and revived, is one new track on this route. As technology rapidly develops, even more high-tech versions are being proposed, such as the possibility that we will upload ourselves onto computers and then reload ourselves into new bodies or digital avatars.

Some, however, are not keen to reinherit their old bodies in the next life, even in digital form; the material world they believe to be too unreliable to guarantee eternity. They therefore dream of surviving as some kind of spiritual entity—or
Soul
, which is the third path. The majority of people on earth currently believe they have one, including two-thirds of people in the United Kingdom and even more in the United States. It has come to be the dominant belief in Christianity and is central to Hinduism, Buddhism and many other religions.

Unlike followers of the Resurrection Narrative, believers in the Soul Narrative have mostly given up on this earthly frame and believe in a future consisting of some more spiritual stuff. Though less rooted in nature, this belief also arises intuitively: in dreams and
mystical experiences, humans have long had the feeling of leaving their bodies behind. To many, soul or mind has seemed separable from the flesh in which it resides—and therefore able to survive without it.

Although the idea of the soul has flourished in both East and West, it too has its doubters, particularly among the materially minded. But even they can find solace in what is perhaps the most widespread narrative of all: the fourth path,
Legacy
. This requires neither the survival of the physical body nor an immaterial soul, but is concerned instead with more indirect ways of extending ourselves into the future.

The association of fame and immortality was widespread in the ancient world, and many people since have followed the example set by the Greek hero Achilles on the battlefield of Troy in choosing eternal glory over a long life. The Greeks believed that culture had a permanence and solidity that biology lacked; eternal life therefore belonged to the hero who could stake a place for himself in the cultural realm. Today we seem to be as desperate for celebrity as Achilles was for glory; the competition for cultural space is as hot as ever.

Some of us also leave a more tangible legacy than our reputations alone: children. Our genes have been called immortal because they stretch back millions of years in a traceable line to the very beginnings of life, and if we are lucky will also continue into the distant future. Or perhaps, as some claim, our legacy is to have been part of life on earth—part of Gaia, the superorganism that will remain long after we individually are gone, or even part of the unfolding cosmos itself.

T
HESE
narratives are manifested in many different forms, from ancient myths to political manifestos, but at least one is present in every culture, providing the milestones and signposts on life’s road. Some civilizations have followed a single path for thousands of years. Others have shifted from pursuing one path to the next. But no
civilization has survived unsupported by one of the four: all have immortality narratives, and all immortality narratives fall into one of these four kinds.

Today in the developed world, all four narratives are as present as ever—though not interwoven into a single story. Rather, they are competing views in a marketplace of beliefs. Some of us shop around, reflecting deeply before taking our pick; others follow the latest fads; while most of us simply do whatever our parents did. But whether we know it or not, the vast majority of us have bought into one or another of the immortality creeds.

I
N
the course of this book we will see many examples of the four narratives in action, but there is no better starting place than the banks of the Nile, where the pursuit of immortality achieved an unrivaled sophistication and splendor. The civilization of ancient Egypt survived almost unchanged for some three thousand years. Even after it was conquered—first by the Persians, then the armies of Alexander the Great, then, following Cleopatra’s famous suicide, by Rome—it continued to have immense cultural and religious influence. Among the Greeks and Romans, Egypt stood for ancient wisdom; there was a powerful feeling that the Egyptians had found some truth that other cultures struggled to capture.

The Egyptians’ pantheon was only finally suppressed when their Roman conquerors converted en masse in 380
CE
to a potent new immortality system: Christianity (only for it to be replaced a few hundred years later by its close cousin Islam). What made the Egyptian worldview so enduring and attractive was its rich and satisfying immortality narrative. And part of what made this particular narrative so impressive is that it interwove
all four
basic forms into a single whole within its vibrant mythology. As we mentioned, all four narratives are also present today—but as alternatives, not as an integrated
story. In other cultures too, all four have been present—but with only one or two in the foreground. Ancient Egypt is unique in weaving all four narratives into a single beguiling thread. It is a spectacular example of the human religious imagination and of bet-hedging on the way to eternity.

This is why the pharaoh who set out to destroy Nefertiti—Horemheb, a former general—had his work cut out for him: ancient Egyptians might hope to use any of the four paths to live beyond their natural span. First, although they are most famous for their careful preservation of corpses, the Egyptians were also very keen on pursuing the most basic path, Staying Alive. They had a highly sophisticated system of medicine-cum-magic to ward off aging and illness. Herbs, spells and amulets aimed to keep their recipients alive for as long as possible, and preferably forever—numerous surviving papyruses focus on the prolongation of life and reversing aging. For all their colorful accounts of how to make the best of being dead, Staying Alive was very much Plan A.

Nonetheless, these tactics were clearly limited, so they also set their hopes on the Resurrection Narrative. Mummies are perhaps the strongest symbol of the idea that our physical remains can be made to breathe once more. Egyptians went to enormous lengths to ensure that a body was properly preserved in the belief it could be magically revived. This was a massive industry, entrusted to the priests who would drain the corpse’s fluids, remove and separately preserve the soft organs and then apply natron, a naturally occurring salt, to suck out moisture. They then stuffed the body with cloth or sawdust and wrapped it in hundreds of feet of linen, sometimes treated with resin or bitumen as waterproofing (giving rise to the word “mummy,” which comes from the Persian word for bitumen, mum).

Conditions for mummification were far from sterile—maggots, beetles and even mice have been found caught in the linen wrappings—and the priests were far from always trustworthy: the Greek historian Herodotus reported that the bodies of young
women were not handed over until they had decomposed a little, to discourage frisky embalmers from abusing their privileges. The whole process took seventy days and climaxed with the “Opening of the Mouth” ceremony, in which the deceased would be magically reanimated (though their realm of action was confined, of course, only to the Otherworld). The pyramids—which were only built for a relatively brief period early in Egypt’s history, as they proved too attractive to tomb robbers—were constructed in alignment with where the Egyptians believed this Otherworld to be, so helping the inhabitant to launch into the next phase of life.

But the Egyptians did not put their faith in body alone: they also had a version of the third narrative, Soul. Like many ancient peoples, they believed in multiple souls, most important of which was the
ka
, or life force. Breathed by the gods into each person at the instant of birth, the
ka
was what enabled a person to produce a child—something like sexual potency, or what blues singers call “mojo.” After death, it was thought to continue to live in the mummy and required a steady supply of sustenance. It was therefore crucial that friends and relatives of the deceased brought food to the grave upon which the
ka
could feast—consuming of course only the spiritual life force of the offerings, not the physical stuff, which would be conveniently left for the priests.

We have seen that the final punishment meted out to Nefertiti was the attempt to wipe her from history—what the Romans called
damnatio memoriae
. This is because the Egyptians also regarded the fourth narrative, Legacy, as crucial to their survival. They believed that a person’s name and reputation were fundamental parts of them; for a person to live fully in the next world, these had to be preserved too. They therefore took great care to keep their names alive, inscribing them, like modern-day graffiti taggers, on almost anything they could find, from tomb walls to pots and combs. But most important, their friends and family were expected to continue to remember them, chanting their names when bringing food for their
ka
.
If your name was spoken and your monuments still stood, they thought, then at least a part of you still lived.

If all these components came together, then the ancient Egyptian expected a glorious and eternal second life. But if they were all destroyed, neglected or forgotten, then the deceased would be condemned to utter, final extinction—the “second death” that all Egyptians dreaded. This was the sentence that Horemheb imposed on Nefertiti and her husband, the pharaoh Akhenaten. Their crime? To hijack Egypt’s ancient immortality system for themselves.

W
HEN
the archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt found Nefertiti beneath the desert it was in the form of a full-color life-sized bust of the great queen in her prime. Her neck rises long and slender from an elaborate necklace sculpted in exquisite detail; her lips are full, and her eyes are large and seductively lidded. Her face is framed by a unique blue crown that continues the lines of her cheeks and jaw. She radiates authority and ease; she appears both resolved and inscrutable. It is an image of power and beauty as potent now as when it was cast over three thousand years ago.

That was around 1340
BCE
, and she enjoyed a status and influence unprecedented in Egypt’s long history. Nefertiti, whose name means “a beautiful woman has come,” was not only the pharaoh’s great queen, his foremost consort and mother of six daughters by him—she was his equal, portrayed smiting enemies, riding chariots and worshipping alongside him.

The pharaoh, Akhenaten, on the other hand, was a freakish figure, spindly limbed and potbellied, far from the Egyptian ideal of the broad-shouldered warrior. As head of state and religion—the two were inseparable—he played a crucial role in the immortality narrative: he was expected to lead the rituals and ceremonies that kept the cosmos in balance, ensuring for his people safe passage through this world and into the next. But he and his bold and beautiful wife had other ideas.

At first they merely neglected the other gods, building instead vast temples to the previously obscure deity Aten, associated with the sun disc. After five years on the throne, they broke with the old ways completely and abandoned the historic seat of Thebes for a new capital, which they called Akhetaten—“horizon of the Aten.” Rising from a dusty plain in a just a few years, this sparkling city was filled with images of Akhenaten and Nefertiti bathing in the light of the sun, their god, its rays reaching out to offer them an ankh, the cross-shaped symbol of eternal life; underneath, inscribed in hieroglyphs: “may they live forever.” But even this was not enough, and once established in their new palace they announced that the old religion was dead—that there was no god but Aten and they were his prophets. They had launched the first recorded monotheism in history, with themselves as its sole ambassadors on earth.