The ancient Egyptians, though obsessed with the death of the
individual and famous for their elaborate (and lasting) funeral
rites, left little evidence regarding universal eschatology, and
as with all long-lasting and ancient cultures, the sources that
do exist can at times be vague and contradictory. The few texts
that do deal with the end of time envisage it as a cataclysmic
destruction followed by a return to the primordial state. In the
Book of the Dead, the creator god Amun declares that after
“millions of millions” years, he will destroy everything that he
has made “and the land will return into the Deep, into the
Flood, as it was before [creation]” (Pinch 89). However, Amun
also says that “I and Osiris will be the remainder” (Silverman
131). Amun embodied the changeless pattern of existence, and
Osiris, the god of the afterlife, was the embodiment of daily
rebirth, so the survival of the two gods “carries with it the
promise of a new creation and the beginning of a new eternity”
(Silverman 131). Cycle