“DIGGING FOR THE TRUTH” WITH JOSH BERSTEIN
Although I wouldn’t call myself a history buff, I must admit that this particular field of science fascinates me. And I find myself absolutely engrossed in the History Channel.
For the last year or so I’ve been a fan of one of their series, namely “Digging for the Truth” with Josh Berstein. I find it extremely captivating and the host himself quite charming, a modern day Indiana Jones of sorts. He goes to the extremes to find the truth about any given topic so a viewer ends up with a perfect mixture of history and adventure.
One of the episodes that touched and surprised me at the same time dealt with the mysteries of the Egyptian mummies. In this episode, Josh went to Egypt to discover why mummification was so vitally important to the ancient Egyptians and what the spiritual meaning behind the embalming process was. What he discovered was that over the centuries both the mummification and the spiritual beliefs changed and evolved from simple to more complex and elaborate. And that spirituality was of utmost importance to the ancient Egyptians.
What surprised me though was a little known fact that the tradition of embalming the dead lasted all the way till the fifth century AD! And the only reason why this ancient ritual had come to an end was the rise of e new religion, Christianity with its vicious practice of eradicating everything pagan and contradictory to their main dogma.
Therefore, in the fifth century Christians began destroying the beautiful works of the ancient Egyptians that lasted for thousands of years before them. The enormous amount of knowledge and art was lost in the early Church’s insatiable drive to eradicate everything pagan.
Watching Josh listening to the explanations, I could see the sadness and regret at the realization of the loss clearly painted on his face. Here was an ancient culture that lasted for thousands of years but when faced with the intolerant new religion, it faded away…
It is really quite a shame when one thinks about the amount of precious knowledge and artifacts that have been lost over the centuries simply because the Church father could not take a bit of healthy competition…