Five gods guided initiates through trials of solidarity, knowledge, strength, ambition and zeal. Success was celebrated as preparation for the God-Pharaoh’s promised afterlife, and death during the final test was treated as fulfilment. The culture did not need constant visible force because its highest honour had been aligned with Bolas’s need.
Gideon entered the trials and struggled with their appeal. Oketra embodied protection, discipline and community in ways that resembled values he already held. The people around him were not fools; they displayed real courage and cared for one another. Their virtues had been placed inside a conclusion designed by someone else.
The honoured dead were embalmed differently from the mummies serving the living. Lazotep created durable bodies whose identities could be removed. What Naktamun called passage was an industrial process selecting skilled combatants for an army that would never return the glory promised to them.