The Quranic verse Quran 44:29 mentions the mourning for Pharaoh and his people, stating:

This statement contrasts a claim found in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, which describe the sky mourning the death of Pharaohs. This claim, found in the pyramid texts, speaks of the sky weeping, the stars shaking, and the gods trembling when the Pharaoh passes on, suggesting that the heavens weep for the king's passing. This description appears in various Egyptian funerary texts, which were only deciphered in the early 19th century.

In ancient Egypt, hieroglyphic writing was a sophisticated script used for religious, governmental, and monumental inscriptions. However, after the closure of pagan temples and the decline of Egypt's ancient religious traditions in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphs was lost for centuries. It wasn’t until the early 1800s, when Jean-François Champollion successfully deciphered the script using the Rosetta Stone, that scholars could begin to understand Egyptian texts.

The hieroglyphs that describe the mourning of Pharaohs convey that the sky weeps as part of a mythological narrative about the Pharaoh's divine nature and his journey to the afterlife. This is seen in texts where the sky and stars mourn the death of the Pharaoh, suggesting the profound cosmic significance of his passing. This myth is tied to Egyptian beliefs in the Pharaoh's role as a god and mediator between the divine and human realms.

"The sky weeps, the stars shake, the keepers of the gods tremble, and their servants flee when they behold the King rising up as spirit." This reflects how the ancient Egyptians symbolized cosmic reactions to the death of a ruler.

In contrast to this Egyptian concept, the Quran states that neither heaven nor earth mourned the Pharaoh, which contradicts the ancient Egyptian belief that the skies wept for him. The verse in the Quran emphasizes that the divine judgment did not extend to reprieving Pharaoh or granting him any special cosmic sympathy.

The fact that the Quranic verse Quran 44:29 addresses the concept of the mourning of Pharaoh before hieroglyphs were deciphered raises an important question: How could an unlettered man from the 7th century have known this detail about Egyptian beliefs, which was only understood in the modern era after the deciphering of hieroglyphic texts?