ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Akhet (hieroglyph)

Imagine you are playing a game and you have to draw a picture to represent yourself. You might draw a picture of your face or maybe your favorite toy. Well, people in ancient Egypt also had a way to draw pictures to represent things. They used a special writing system called hieroglyphics.

One of the hieroglyphics they used was the akhet symbol. The akhet symbol looks like a picture of the rising sun sitting between two mountains. Now, when we see the sunrise or the sunset, it's like the sun is going up or down behind the mountains, right? Egyptians noticed this too, and they thought it was very important because they believed the sunrise and sunset were special times of the day.

So, the akhet symbol symbolized the sunrise and the sunset and it had a deeper meaning for the ancient Egyptians. They believed that during sunrise, a god named Ra would come up from the underworld. And during sunset, Ra would go down below the horizon into the underworld. They thought this cycle of Ra going up and down was a very important and powerful thing.

The ancient Egyptians also connected the akhet symbol to the concept of time. They believed that one day was made up of three parts - morning, noon, and night. They would use the akhet symbol to represent the morning part of the day. They would draw this symbol on walls, tombs, and even on papyrus paper to show that a new day was beginning.

In addition to representing time, the akhet symbol also had a connection to the afterlife. Egyptians believed in an afterlife, which means they believed that when someone dies, their soul will go to another place. They thought that the akhet symbol was like a doorway or a gateway to the afterlife. So, they would carve the akhet symbol on tombs and use it as a symbol of hope that the person's soul would safely pass through this gateway to the afterlife.

Overall, the akhet symbol in hieroglyphics was a very important and powerful symbol for the ancient Egyptians. It represented the sunrise, sunset, time, and the afterlife. It showed the Egyptians' connection to the natural world and their beliefs about life and death.