Egyptians believed that each person had a physical body and a ‘ka’ – a life force that continued after their death. Their ka would need the same sustenance as a living person, along with entertainment and the tools of their trade. All these items were placed in their tomb.

Crucially, the ka would need re-uniting with a physical body, which is why corpses were mummified. The deceased needed to rejoin its ka to achieve life after death but, since the physical body couldn’t journey from the tomb to the underworld, the person’s ‘ba’, or personality, did it instead.

Once the ba and ka were united, they made a final journey to the sky, sunlight and stars where the deceased was resurrected as an ‘akh’ (or spirit) and lived forever.