The “book of the dead” is a modern name given to a number of ancient Egyptian texts that the Egyptians believed would help the dead navigate the underworld, as well as serve other purposes. copies of these texts were sometimes buried with the dead.
The “‘book of the dead’ denotes the relatively large corpus of mortuary texts that were normally copied onto papyrus scrolls and deposited in New Kingdom burials [circa 1550 BCE to 1070 BCE],” wrote Peter Dorman , Emeritus Professor. of Egyptology from the University of Chicago, in an article published in the book “Book of the Dead: Becoming a God in Ancient Egypt (Opens in New Tab)” (Oriental Institute Museum Publications, 2017).
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The “book of the dead” became popular during the new kingdom, but was derived from the “coffin texts”, so called because they were often written on coffins, and the “pyramid texts” which They were inscribed on the walls. of the pyramids, he pointed out dorman. Coffin texts were popular during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2030 BC to 1640 BC), while Pyramid Texts first appeared in the Old Kingdom’s Fifth Dynasty (circa 2465 BC to 2323 BC). /p>
spell book of the dead
the “book of the dead” includes individual chapters or spells. “The ancient Egyptians used the word rꜢ to designate each composition. The word rꜢ is usually translated as ‘spell’ or ‘expression.’ It is written with the hieroglyph of a human mouth because the term was related to speech,” Foy Scalf said. , head of research archives at the university of chicago who has a doctorate in egyptology, to live science in an email.
a standard book was not found in each tomb. instead, each copy contained different spells. “None of these ‘books’ contains all known spells, but only a judicious sampling,” Dorman wrote, noting that “no ‘book of the dead’ scroll is identical to another.”
ancient egyptians called these texts the “daytime apparition book,” dorman wrote, noting that this name reflected “the egyptian belief that spells were provided to help the deceased enter the deeper there as a glorified spirit, or aj”.
These texts “prepared the Egyptians for life after death and [had] the power to conjure all parts of the body for spiritual journey,” wrote Barry Kemp, Emeritus Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge, in his book “How to Read the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Opens in New Tab)” (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). “The book of the dead, by means of its spells, bestowed upon its owner the power to navigate successfully, for eternity, through the various realms [of the underworld],” Kemp wrote.
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Some spells appear more frequently in copies of the “book of the dead” than others, and some were considered almost essential. One of these essential spells is now known as Spell 17, which discusses the importance of the sun god Re (also called Ra), one of the most important Egyptian gods, Dorman noted.
Ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the deceased could be renewed in the afterlife by letting a person navigate a place of “gods, demons, mysterious places and possible obstacles,” Kemp wrote. the “book of the dead” chapters described some of the things one might encounter, such as the weighing of the heart ceremony in which a person’s actions were compared to the feather of the goddess maat, a deity associated with justice .
spells were often illustrated. “Images [were] of great importance in the New Kingdom collection of funerary texts now called the Egyptian Book of the Dead,” wrote Geraldine Pinch, an Egyptologist, in her book “Egyptian Myth: A Very Brief Introduction (opens in a new tab) (Oxford University Press, 2004) “Many owners of books of the dead would not have been able to read the hieroglyphic texts, but could understand the complex vignettes that summarized the contents of the spells,” Pinch wrote.
the spells were not gender specific. It didn’t have “spells that were used particularly by women” or spells that were used primarily by men, Marissa Stevens, an Egyptologist and deputy director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Live Science in an email. email.
multiple purposes
The “book of the dead” is most famous for its guidance to the departed, but probably served other purposes as well. “Too often, the ‘book of the dead’ has been called a ‘guide’ to the afterlife; it was so much more than that,” Scalf told Live Science. “Probably the most important function of the ‘book of the dead,’ which can only be deduced from indirect evidence, is that it helped allay people’s fears about the unknowns of death,” said Scalf, noting that the ancient Egyptians The wealthy also arranged to mummify their bodies and decorate their coffins with religious texts in an effort to control what happened to them once they died.
Also, spells from the “book of the dead” could be used while a person was still alive. “Most ‘book of the dead’ spells aren’t designed to ‘navigate’ the underworld,” Scalf said. “Most spells are about transformation and transcendent experience. In earthly life, a ritualist can use rites and incantations to transcend everyday experience [using the spells in a ceremony to have a religious experience],” he said scalf, noting that “many of the spells include instructions on how to use them on earth,” showing that they were probably used by living people as well, scalf said.
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Many of these spells could also be used in the afterlife, the Egyptians believed. “a person can use these same spells to help transform their existence, but in many ways it’s a similar transcendent experience. the spells are very much about rising to the gods’ plane of existence; only then would the person travel to the underworld together with the gods themselves,” scalf said.
copies for burial
many copies of the “book of the dead” that have been discovered were unearthed in graves and probably not widely read. And many of the “book of the dead” manuscripts that survive today probably weren’t read long before they were buried with the deceased, scalf told wordssidekick.com.
“the longest of the papyrus manuscripts is over thirty meters [98 feet] long; it would have been a very difficult manuscript to navigate while reading. these manuscripts [found in tombs] were prestigious copies, largely part intended to be deposited in the grave,” said scalf.
Also, the “book of the dead” spells were not always written in manuscripts. For example, Scalf noted that spells were sometimes written on the bandages that wrapped a person’s mummy. They were also inscribed on tomb walls and even on Tutankhamun’s golden death mask.
It is possible that people who could not afford a copy of the spells had the spells read to them. “If you didn’t have a scroll in your tomb, hired priests or family members might have recited it during the funeral or when they visited the tomb afterwards,” Lara Weiss, curator of the Egyptian and Nubian collection at the country’s National Museum low. museum of antiquities in leiden, told living science in an email.
The last known copies of the “Book of the Dead” were created in the first or second century AD, Scalef wrote in a study published in the book “Book of the Dead: Becoming a God in Ancient Egypt.” another series of funerary texts known as the “breathing books” became popular in their place, which was derived, in part, from the “book of the dead,” scalf wrote.
additional resources
- the “amun nauny singer’s book of the dead” is over 17 feet [5 meters] long and is now in the metropolitan museum of art (opens in new tab) in the city of new york.
- google arts & the culture website (opens in a new tab) has high resolution images of copies of j. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California.
- The “Ani Papyrus” is another beautiful copy of the “Book of the Dead” in the British Museum (opens in new tab).
Originally published in Living Science.
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