Book of the Dead
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Book of Coming Forth by Day in hieroglyphs | |||||||||
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Era: New Kingdom (1550–1069 BC) | |||||||||
The Book of the Dead (
The Book of the Dead, which was placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased, was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier
There was no single or
depicting the deceased and their journey into the afterlife.The finest extant example of the Egyptian in antiquity is the Papyrus of Ani. Ani was an Egyptian scribe. It was discovered in Luxor in 1888 by Egyptians trading in illegal antiquities. It was acquired by E. A. Wallis Budge, as described in his autobiography By Nile and Tigris in 1888 and was taken to the British Museum, where it remains.
Examples in museums
- Papyrus of Ani, British Museum
- Papyrus of Hunefer, British Museum
- Papyrus of Pinedjem II, or "Campbell Papyrus", British Museum
- Book of the Dead of Nehem-es-Rataui, Museum August Kestner in Hanover, Germany
- Book of the Dead of Amen-em-hat, Royal Ontario Museum
- Book of the Dead of Qenna, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands
- Book of the Dead (Art Institute of Chicago)
- Joseph Smith Papyri (Books of the Dead of TaSheritMin, Nefer-ir-nebu, and Amenhotep), fragments, many destroyed in modern times
Development
The Book of the Dead developed from a tradition of funerary manuscripts dating back to the Egyptian
The purpose of the Pyramid Texts was to help the dead king take his place amongst the gods, in particular to reunite him with his divine father Ra; at this period the afterlife was seen as being in the sky, rather than the underworld described in the Book of the Dead.[6] Towards the end of the Old Kingdom, the Pyramid Texts ceased to be an exclusively royal privilege, and were adopted by regional governors and other high-ranking officials.[6]
In the Middle Kingdom, a new funerary text emerged, the Coffin Texts. The Coffin Texts used a newer version of the language, new spells, and included illustrations for the first time. The Coffin Texts were most commonly written on the inner surfaces of coffins, though they are occasionally found on tomb walls or on papyri.[6] The Coffin Texts were available to wealthy private individuals, vastly increasing the number of people who could expect to participate in the afterlife; a process which has been described as the "democratization of the afterlife".[7]
The Book of the Dead first developed in
By the
The
In the
During the
Spells
The Book of the Dead is made up of a number of individual texts and their accompanying illustrations. Most sub-texts begin with the word r(ꜣ), which can mean "mouth", "speech", "spell", "utterance", "incantation", or "chapter of a book". This ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought between ritual speech and magical power.[14] In the context of the Book of the Dead, it is typically translated as either chapter or spell. In this article, the word spell is used.
At present, some 192 spells are known,
Such spells as 26–30, and sometimes spells 6 and 126, relate to the heart and were inscribed on scarabs.[17]
The texts and images of the Book of the Dead were magical as well as religious. Magic was as legitimate an activity as praying to the gods, even when the magic was aimed at controlling the gods themselves.[18] Indeed, there was little distinction for the Ancient Egyptians between magical and religious practice.[19] The concept of magic (heka) was also intimately linked with the spoken and written word. The act of speaking a ritual formula was an act of creation;[20] there is a sense in which action and speech were one and the same thing.[19] The magical power of words extended to the written word. Hieroglyphic script was held to have been invented by the god Thoth, and the hieroglyphs themselves were powerful. Written words conveyed the full force of a spell.[20] This was even true when the text was abbreviated or omitted, as often occurred in later Book of the Dead scrolls, particularly if the accompanying images were present.[21] The Egyptians also believed that knowing the name of something gave power over it; thus, the Book of the Dead equips its owner with the mystical names of many of the entities he would encounter in the afterlife, giving him power over them.[22]
The spells of the Book of the Dead made use of several magical techniques which can also be seen in other areas of Egyptian life. A number of spells are for magical amulets, which would protect the deceased from harm. In addition to being represented on a Book of the Dead papyrus, these spells appeared on amulets wound into the wrappings of a mummy.[18] Everyday magic made use of amulets in huge numbers. Other items in direct contact with the body in the tomb, such as headrests, were also considered to have amuletic value.[23] A number of spells also refer to Egyptian beliefs about the magical healing power of saliva.[18]
Organization
Almost every Book of the Dead was unique, containing a different mixture of spells drawn from the corpus of texts available. For most of the history of the Book of the Dead there was no defined order or structure.
The Books of the Dead from the Saite period tend to organize the Chapters into four sections:
- Chapters 1–16: The deceased enters the tomb and descends to the underworld, and the body regains its powers of movement and speech.
- Chapters 17–63: Explanation of the mythic origin of the gods and places. The deceased is made to live again so that he may arise, reborn, with the morning sun.
- Chapters 64–129: The deceased travels across the sky in the sun barque as one of the blessed dead. In the evening, the deceased travels to the underworld to appear before Osiris.
- Chapters 130–189: Having been vindicated, the deceased assumes power in the universe as one of the gods. This section also includes assorted chapters on protective amulets, provision of food, and important places.[26]
Egyptian concepts of death and afterlife
The spells in the Book of the Dead depict Egyptian beliefs about the nature of death and the afterlife. The Book of the Dead is a vital source of information about Egyptian beliefs in this area.
Preservation
One aspect of death was the disintegration of the various kheperu, or modes of existence.
Afterlife
The nature of the afterlife which the dead people enjoyed is difficult to define, because of the differing traditions within Ancient Egyptian religion. In the Book of the Dead, the dead were taken into the presence of the god Osiris, who was confined to the subterranean Duat. There are also spells to enable the ba or akh of the dead to join Ra as he travelled the sky in his sun-barque, and help him fight off Apep.[36] As well as joining the Gods, the Book of the Dead also depicts the dead living on in the 'Field of Reeds', a paradisiac likeness of the real world.[37] The Field of Reeds is depicted as a lush, plentiful version of the Egyptian way of living. There are fields, crops, oxen, people and waterways. The deceased person is shown encountering the Great Ennead, a group of gods, as well as his or her own parents. While the depiction of the Field of Reeds is pleasant and plentiful, it is also clear that manual labour is required. For this reason burials included a number of statuettes named shabti, or later ushebti. These statuettes were inscribed with a spell, also included in the Book of the Dead, requiring them to undertake any manual labour that might be the owner's duty in the afterlife.[38] It is also clear that the dead not only went to a place where the gods lived, but that they acquired divine characteristics themselves. In many occasions, the deceased is mentioned as "The Osiris – [Name]" in the Book of the Dead.
The path to the afterlife as laid out in the Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The deceased was required to pass a series of gates, caverns and mounds guarded by supernatural creatures.[40] These terrifying entities were armed with enormous knives and are illustrated in grotesque forms, typically as human figures with the heads of animals or combinations of different ferocious beasts. Their names—for instance, "He who lives on snakes" or "He who dances in blood"—are equally grotesque. These creatures had to be pacified by reciting the appropriate spells included in the Book of the Dead; once pacified they posed no further threat, and could even extend their protection to the dead person.[41] Another breed of supernatural creatures was 'slaughterers' who killed the unrighteous on behalf of Osiris; the Book of the Dead equipped its owner to escape their attentions.[42] As well as these supernatural entities, there were also threats from natural or supernatural animals, including crocodiles, snakes, and beetles.[43]
Judgment
The deceased's first task was to correctly address each of the forty-two Assessors of Maat by name, while reciting the sins they did not commit during their lifetime.[44] This process allowed the dead to demonstrate that they knew each of the judges' names or Ren and established that they were pure, and free of sin.
If all the obstacles of the Duat could be negotiated, the deceased would be judged in the "
This scene is remarkable not only for its vividness but as one of the few parts of the Book of the Dead with any explicit moral content. The judgment of the dead and the Negative Confession were a representation of the conventional moral code which governed Egyptian society. For every "I have not..." in the Negative Confession, it is possible to read an unexpressed "Thou shalt not".
Producing a Book of the Dead
A Book of the Dead was produced to order by scribes. They were commissioned by people in preparation for their own funerals, or by the relatives of someone recently deceased. They were expensive items; one source gives the price of a Book of the Dead scroll as one deben of silver,[52] perhaps half the annual pay of a laborer.[53] Papyrus itself was evidently costly, as there are many instances of its re-use in everyday documents, creating palimpsests. In one case, a Book of the Dead was written on second-hand papyrus.[54]
Most owners of the Book of the Dead were evidently part of the social elite; they were initially reserved for the royal family, but later papyri are found in the tombs of scribes, priests and officials. Most owners were men, and generally the vignettes included the owner's wife as well. Towards the beginning of the history of the Book of the Dead, there are roughly ten copies belonging to men for every one for a woman. However, during the Third Intermediate Period, two were for women for every one for a man; and women owned roughly a third of the hieratic papyri from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods.[55]
The dimensions of a Book of the Dead could vary widely; the longest is 40 m long while some are as short as 1 m. They are composed of sheets of papyrus joined together, the individual papyri varying in width from 15 cm to 45 cm. The scribes working on Book of the Dead papyri took more care over their work than those working on more mundane texts; care was taken to frame the text within margins, and to avoid writing on the joints between sheets. The words peret em heru, or coming forth by day sometimes appear on the reverse of the outer margin, perhaps acting as a label.[54]
Books were often prefabricated in funerary workshops, with spaces being left for the name of the deceased to be written in later.[56] For instance, in the Papyrus of Ani, the name "Ani" appears at the top or bottom of a column, or immediately following a rubric introducing him as the speaker of a block of text; the name appears in a different handwriting to the rest of the manuscript, and in some places is mis-spelt or omitted entirely.[53]
The text of a New Kingdom Book of the Dead was typically written in cursive hieroglyphs, most often from left to right, but also sometimes from right to left. The hieroglyphs were in columns, which were separated by black lines – a similar arrangement to that used when hieroglyphs were carved on tomb walls or monuments. Illustrations were put in frames above, below, or between the columns of text. The largest illustrations took up a full page of papyrus.[57]
From the
The text of a Book of the Dead was written in both black and red ink, regardless of whether it was in hieroglyphic or hieratic script. Most of the text was in black, with red ink used for the titles of spells, opening and closing sections of spells, the instructions to perform spells correctly in rituals, and also for the names of dangerous creatures such as the demon Apep.[58] The black ink used was based on carbon, and the red ink on ochre, in both cases mixed with water.[59]
The style and nature of the vignettes used to illustrate a Book of the Dead varies widely. Some contain lavish color illustrations, even making use of gold leaf. Others contain only line drawings, or one simple illustration at the opening.[60]
Book of the Dead papyri were often the work of several different scribes and artists whose work was literally pasted together.[54] It is usually possible to identify the style of more than one scribe used on a given manuscript, even when the manuscript is a shorter one.[58] The text and illustrations were produced by different scribes; there are a number of Books where the text was completed but the illustrations were left empty.[61]
Discovery, translation, interpretation and preservation
The existence of the Book of the Dead was known as early as the
In 1842
The work of E. A. Wallis Budge, Birch's successor at the British Museum, is still in wide circulation – including both his hieroglyphic editions and his English translations of the Papyrus of Ani, though the latter are now considered inaccurate and out-of-date.[66] More recent translations in English have been published by T. G. Allen (1974) and Raymond O. Faulkner (1972).[67] As more work has been done on the Book of the Dead, more spells have been identified, and the total now stands at 192.[15]
In the 1970s, Ursula Rößler-Köhler at the University of Bonn began a working group to develop the history of Book of the Dead texts. This later received sponsorship from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the German Research Foundation, in 2004 coming under the auspices of the German Academies of Sciences and Arts. Today the Book of the Dead Project, as it is called, maintains a database of documentation and photography covering 80% of extant copies and fragments from the corpus of Book of the Dead texts, and provides current services to Egyptologists.[68] It is housed at the University of Bonn, with much material available online.[69] Affiliated scholars are authoring a series of monograph studies, the Studien zum Altägyptischen Totenbuch, alongside a series that publishes the manuscripts themselves, Handschriften des Altägyptischen Totenbuches.[70] Both are in print by Harrassowitz Verlag. Orientverlag has released another series of related monographs, Totenbuchtexte, focused on analysis, synoptic comparison, and textual criticism.
Research work on the Book of the Dead has always posed technical difficulties thanks to the need to copy very long hieroglyphic texts. Initially, these were copied out by hand, with the assistance either of tracing paper or a camera lucida. In the mid-19th century, hieroglyphic fonts became available and made lithographic reproduction of manuscripts more feasible. In the present day, hieroglyphics can be rendered in desktop publishing software and this, combined with digital print technology, means that the costs of publishing a Book of the Dead may be considerably reduced. However, a very large amount of the source material in museums around the world remains unpublished.[71]
In 2023, the Ministry of Antiquities announced the finding of sections of the Book of the Dead on a 16-foot papyrus in a coffin near the
.Chronology
- c. 3150 BC – First preserved hieroglyphs, on small labels in the tomb of a king buried (in tomb U-j) at Abydos
- c. 3000 BC – The beginning of the numbered dynasties of kings of ancient Egypt
- c. 2345 BC – First royal pyramid, of King Unas, to contain the Pyramid Texts, carved precursors to the funerary literature from which the Book of the Dead ultimately developed
- c. 2100 BC – First Coffin Texts, developed from the Pyramid Texts and for a time painted on the coffins of commoners. Many spells of the Book of the Dead are closely derived from them
- c. 1600 BC – Earliest spells of the Book of the Dead, on the coffin of Queen Menthuhotep, an ancestor of kings from the New Kingdom
- c. 1550 BC – From this time onward to the beginning of the New Kingdom, papyrus copies of the Book of the Dead are used instead of inscribing spells on the walls of the tombs
- c. 600 BC – Approximately when the order of the spells became standard
- 42–553 AD – Christianity spreads to Egypt, gradually replacing the native religion as successive emperors alternately tolerate or suppress them, culminating in the last temple at Philae(also site of the last known religious inscription in demotic, dating from 452) being closed by order of Emperor Justinian in 533
- 2nd century AD – Possibly the last copies of the Book of the Dead were produced, but it is a poorly documented era of history
- 1798 AD – Napoleon's invasion of Egypt encourages European interests in ancient Egypt; 1799, Vivant Denon was handed a copy of the Book of the Dead
- 1805 AD – Jean-Marcel Cadet makes the first publication, on 18 plates, of a Book of the Dead, Copie figurée d'un rouleau de papyrus trouvé à Thèbes, dans un tombeau des rois[73]
- 1822 AD – Jean-François Champollion announces the key to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, subsequently developed in his later publications, the most extensive after his death in 1832
- 1842 AD – Lepsius publishes the first major study of the Book of the Dead, begins the numbering of the spells or chapters, and brings the name "Book of the Dead" into general circulation[74]
See also
- Garuda Purana
- Bardo Thodol (Tibetan book of the dead)
- List of papyri from ancient Egypt
- Ghosts in ancient Egyptian culture
- Medjed
- Necronomicon (H. P. Lovecraft's book of the dead)
- Qenna
- Shūjin e no Pert-em-Hru
References
Citations
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.54
- ^ Allen, 2000. p.316
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.55; or perhaps "Utterances of Going Forth by Day", D'Auria 1988, p. 187
- ^ The Egyptian Book of the Dead by Anonymous (2 Jun 2014) ...with an introduction by Paul Mirecki (VII)
- ^ Faulkner p. 54
- ^ a b c d Taylor 2010, p. 54
- ^ D'Auria et al p.187
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.34
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 55
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.35–7
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.57–8
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.59 60
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.51
- ^ Faulkner 1994, p.145; Taylor 2010, p.29
- ^ a b c Faulkner 1994, p.18
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.51, 56
- ^ Hornung 1999, p.14
- ^ a b c Faulkner 1994, p.146
- ^ a b Faulkner 1994, p.145
- ^ a b Taylor 2010, p.30
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.32–3; Faulkner 1994, p.148
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.30–1
- ^ Pinch 1994, p.104–5
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.55
- ^ Barguet, Paul (1967). Le Livre des morts des anciens Égyptiens (in French). Paris: Éditions du Cerf.
- ^ a b Faulkner 1994, p.141
- ^ Taylor, p.58
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.16-17
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.17 & 20
- ^ For instance, Spell 154. Taylor 2010, p.161
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.163-4
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.163
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.17, 164
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.164
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.17
- ^ Spells 100–2, 129–131 and 133–136. Taylor 2010, p.239–241
- ^ Spells 109, 110 and 149. Taylor 2010, p.238–240
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.242–245
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.143
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.135
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.136–7
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 188
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 184–7
- ^ Coogan, Michael D. (2013). A Reader of Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Sources for the Study of the Old Testament,"Negative Confessions". New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 149–150.
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 208
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.209
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.215
- ^ a b Taylor 2010, p.212
- ^ a b Faulkner 1994, p.14
- ^ Taylor 2010,p.204–5
- ^ Pinch 1994, p.155
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 62
- ^ a b Faulkner 1994, p. 142
- ^ a b c Taylor 2010, p. 264
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 62–63
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 267
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 266
- ^ a b Taylor 2010, p. 270
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 277
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 267–8
- ^ Taylor 2010, p. 268
- ^ Faulkner 1994, p.13
- ^ Taylor 210, p.288 9
- ^ "Egypt's Place in Universal History", Vol 5, 1867
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.289 92
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.291
- ^ Hornung 1999, p.15–16
- ^ Müller-Roth 2010, p.190-191
- ^ Das Altagyptische Totenbuch: Ein Digitales Textzeugenarchiv (external link)
- ^ Müller-Roth 2010, p.191
- ^ Taylor 2010, p.292–7
- ^ Jarus, Owen (January 26, 2023). "52-foot-long Book of the Dead papyrus from ancient Egypt discovered at Saqqara". livescience.com. Retrieved February 24, 2023.
- ^ Cadet, Jean-Marcel (1805). Copie figurée d'un rouleau de papyrus trouvé à Thèbes, dans un tombeau des rois. Paris: Levrault, Schoell & Cie.
- ^ Kemp, Barry (2007). How to Read the Egyptian Book of the Dead. New York: Granta Publications. pp. 112–113.
Works cited
- ISBN 0-521-77483-7
- Faulkner, Raymond O (translator); von Dassow, Eva (editor), The Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Book of Going forth by Day. The First Authentic Presentation of the Complete Papyrus of Ani. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1994.
- ISBN 0-8014-8515-0
- Müller-Roth, Marcus, "The Book of the Dead Project: Past, present and future." British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan 15 (2010): 189–200.
- Pinch, Geraldine, Magic in Ancient Egypt. British Museum Press, London, 1994. ISBN 0-7141-0971-1
- Taylor, John H. (Editor), Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: Journey through the afterlife. British Museum Press, London, 2010. ISBN 978-0-7141-1993-9
Further reading
- Allen, Thomas George, The Egyptian Book of the Dead: Documents in the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1960.
- Allen, Thomas George, The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day. Ideas of the Ancient Egyptians Concerning the Hereafter as Expressed in Their Own Terms, SAOC vol. 37; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1974.
- ISBN 0-8014-4241-9
- D'Auria, S (et al.) Mummies and Magic: the Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989. ISBN 0-87846-307-0
- Faulkner, Raymond O; Andrews, Carol (editor), The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1972.
- Lapp, G, The Papyrus of Nu (Catalogue of Books of the Dead in the British Museum). British Museum Press, London, 1997.
- Niwinski, Andrzej , Studies on the Illustrated Theban Funerary Papyri of the 11th and 10th Centuries B.C.. OBO vol. 86; Universitätsverlag, Freiburg, 1989.
External links
- The Mummy Chamber Brooklyn Museum Exhibit
- Das altägyptische Totenbuch - ein digitales Textzeugenarchiv Complete digital archive of all witnesses for the Book of the Dead (with descriptions of the (c. 3000) objects and (c. 20,000) images)
- Online Readable Text, with several images and reproductions of Egyptian papyri
- Papyrus of Hunefer, with many scenes and their formula English translations, from the copy now in the British Museum
- Video: British Museum curator introduces the Book of the Dead