Amenti story and ending, explained

Going into the Giza pyramids alone is a task only for the bravest explorers, but you may find the answers you’re looking for in Amenti. If you could prove there was an afterlife, would you give your life to find it?

Here is our full rundown of Amenti; explaining its story, ending, and its inspiration.

Warning for spoilers throughout.

Amenti story, explained

We play as a historian and photographer, bravely (and rather stupidly) venturing into the Giza pyramids in hopes of discovering Amenti. The primary goal is to find and photograph Rudamon’s remains. The game takes place in 1979, and the tomb warns explorers of the “dangers of death” before entering. A letter dated 1922, written by Henry Caldwell, talks about the Queen’s spirit being loose in the pyramids. You’re warned: Don’t look back if you hear whispers.

Once Rudamon’s sarcophagus is opened, you hear a wail behind you. Caldwell wrote that approaching the pharaoh’s remains would awaken his spirit and unleash his wrath. The body of Rudamon disappears and a single light illuminates the tomb from the hole in the ceiling directly above the sarcophagus. Taking a photo of the light transports our character to a new sector of the pyramids. Unaware of his surroundings, we look to Caldwell’s letters for guidance. He describes the pyramid may be a temporal void or a moment in time—frozen in Ancient Egypt. This is the Amenti. This dimension is separate from reality and houses tormented spirits, those who spread pain and anguish to wandering souls.

Giant eyes peer at you behind the pyramid walls, visible through the camera’s lens. Is the pyramid some sort of living organism? Statues move by themselves and amulets awaken spirits; these all point to the legend of Amenti being real. Burial decorations show a scene of the Amenti, where a celestial being came down to Egypt to bless them with water through the Nile and the pyramids, granting divine power to the pharaohs. Inscriptions tell the tale of Pharaoh Rudamon and Queen Meretankhkar, where the pharaoh could shift time and space, a power granted by the divine. Mummified for his eternal slumber, it’s said that waking Rudamon would unleash his wrath alongside the Star Gods, releasing a curse of agony and death.

Amenti ending, explained

Jumpscared by the Queen, we’re transported to an otherworldly dimension full of endless still water with a moon on its surface. Returning to the pyramids, our protagonist awakens where he first lost consciousness. He believes he was dreaming, but Caldwell’s letters go on to talk about the tomb being alive and that the Queen is hunting him, wailing through the tomb as a warning.

You find the Queen’s decomposed body on a chair, far from a tomb or burial site, wearing the same clothes as the screaming entity. She wasn’t mummified. It’s highly likely the Queen wasn’t embalmed, meaning all of her organs remained inside of her after she died. There’s the possibility that the Queen suddenly died following a terrible event inside the tombs that meant she couldn’t be mummified. Her soul divided into nine, her Ka (double-form) roamed the pyramids in search for peace as her Khat (physical body) rotted away. If the body isn’t purified and purged of sin, the soul will likely remain on Earth, haunting the living. This is why you can hear the Queen’s wails before entering Amenti.

Soon after, a skeleton is discovered alongside Caldwell’s final note. The skeleton belongs to Caldwell, as his hastily written scribbles describe the impending doom of feral mummies honing in on his location. His uncertainty on whether he’ll escape Amenti fails to transfer over to our character, who believes he can still return to the material realm. A light reveals itself, this time tricking him into believing he’s free from Amenti. But he’s greeted by circular airships flying over the pyramids ahead of him, shooting a beam into the pyramids’ apex. This light is what we saw earlier, meaning a ship transported us to Amenti.

The game ends here as our photographer is trapped in Amenti—likely to have the same slow and agonizing death as Caldwell—delivered by either the Queen or her mummies.

What is Amenti?

Amenti is Ancient Egypt’s version of the underworld. Watched over by Osiris, the first king of Egypt and the god of the underworld, he symbolized death and the cycle of the Nile. The realm of Amenti is said to be divided into fourteen sections, with the lower section of Kama Loka trapping your conscious mind inside until the astral shell dies from exhaustion (resulting in a second death). This then allows the soul to move onto Aanroo (or Devachan), a place where souls go once their desires are fulfilled, and stay until their reincarnation in the material world.

This afterlife process is shown throughout Amenti as the protagonist’s soul moves through the Kama Loka after photographing the celestial light. Here, his astral shell dies and he awakens, believing he is back in reality. The space he was trapped in is dream-like, where he can only see and communicate with Earth-bound souls or discarded astral shells (the Queen). What’s interesting is that the time spent inside the Kama Loka can last centuries and that reincarnation may only happen once Aanroo is reached. The time spent inside this dream-like realm varies on your good karma and sins.

Due to Amenti‘s ending, it appears that the protagonist never reached the higher level of Amenti, and is instead trapped in Kama Loka. We may have joined at the beginning of his journey in the afterlife or perhaps he is now a discarded shell—much like the Queen—as his physical body didn’t get the proper care it needed to peacefully pass on inside the pyramids.