Akhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life of the pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV).
The culmination of his two other Philip Glass biographical operas, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (about Gandhi) they were driven by an inner vision that altered the age in which they lived: Akhenaten in religion, Einstein in science, and Gandhi in politics.
Where did the belief of "The dead shall be raised" come from?
The Egyptians.
They believed that the circumpolar stars were immortal because the circumpolar stars never set and were therefore the Immortal Heavens. (Too bad no one told them that which stars set and which ones don't depends on how far north or south you are.)
So they preserved the bodies of the dead for eternity (and launched the souls of the Pharaohs through conduits in the Pyramids toward the celestial north pole).
How did they preserve them? The same way they dried fish: cutting the bodies open and packing them with salt.
Preserving the shell, and then launching the soul in the shells toward the unsetting stars, preserving consciousness for eternity... salted salmon flying through space toward Polaris... It made sense at the time, but that was quite a long time ago...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhnaten_%28opera%29
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