Night #17 - The Gate, the Tablet, the Underworld, and Religious Validity

Or, wherein I wax theological with respect to the NATM verse. Disclaimer: this has no bearing on the real world whatsoever, so if you want to chew my ass out, go ahead, but bear in mind that I'm only applying this speculation to the world of the franchise only. Which is to say, what I say from here on out applies only to the world inhabited by Larry Daley and exhibits that come to life. This is not that world.

Having said all that, let's figure out exactly what magical Egyptian artifacts say about which is real and which is not from a theological perspective.

Let's get out of the way that it's perfectly okay for a resurrected ancient Egyptian person to invoke Horus and Ra when summoning an army from the underworld, or at the very least the Egyptian underworld. But what does it say when there is evidence that the Egyptian underworld exists but no evidence for any other sort of underworld? In both of these movies, exhibits of people from all sorts of religious creeds are coming to life, everyone from Christopher Columbus and Al Capone to Attila the Hun and the Brothers Egypt. The tablet, being Egyptian, operates on the ancient Egyptian principles of the soul and the afterlife. Therefore, the implication is that no matter what religious background you were raised in or what beliefs you hold in life, in death, the truth is Egyptian. Now, the underworld could be faceted: Christian Heaven and Hell, Duat, and all other forms of afterlife may be represented in the underworld, but for all intents and purposes, the underworld in general operates on Egyptian concepts of the soul and allows for the soul to return to representations of the body under given conditions (see Night #4 for more information).

However, for all intents and purposes, the society in which these movies take place could be our own, with its three major monotheistic religions and general cultural permeation of various elements from these religions, especially the idea of Heaven and Hell in terms of Christian theology. Therefore, letting it get out that there is a gate to the Egyptian underworld, and people can come and go from this underworld and therefore see for themselves that it exists, causes serious cultural problems and may result in societal and cultural collapse for a greater part of the globe. In short, letting the secret of the tablet and the gate get out could result in global chaos.

But secret or not, it appears that the only valid afterlife is that of the Egyptians, unless NATM 3 proves us wrong with the introduction of Lancelot and possibly other British mythological figures and objects, such as the Lady of the Lake and the Sword in the Stone. But until we see whether this is true or not, we are left with the idea that the Egyptians had it right and everyone else in the NATM world is...either mistaken or deliberately lying.

On a lighter note:

Next on "For the Love of Night at the Museum": all the flaws in Kahmunrah's plan, or the trouble with conquering the world

Countdown: 359 Days to NATM 3