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Book of the Dead

For other uses, see Book of the Dead (disambiguation).

This detailed scene, from the Papyrus of Hunefer (c. 1275 BC), shows the scribe Hunefer's heart being weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth, by the jackal-headed Anubis. The ibis-headed Thoth, scribe of the gods, records the result. If his heart equals exactly the weight of the feather, Hunefer is allowed to pass into the afterlife. If not, he is eaten by the waiting chimeric devouring creature Ammit composed of the deadly crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus. Vignettes such as these were a common illustration in Egyptian books of the dead.
D21
Z1
N33A		 W24
Z1		 O1
D21		 X1
D54		 G17O4
D21		 G43N5
Z1
Spells of Coming Forth by Day
in hieroglyphs
Era: New Kingdom
(1550–1069 BC)

The Book of the Dead is the name given to an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC.[1] "Book" is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts[2] consisting of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife and written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years. In 1842, the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius introduced for these texts the German name Todtenbuch (modern spelling Totenbuch), translated to English as 'Book of the Dead'. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw,[3] is translated as Spells of Coming Forth by Day.[4]

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 Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts, which were painted onto objects, not written on papyrus. Some of the spells included in the book were drawn from these older works and date to the 3rd millennium BC. Other spells were composed later in Egyptian history, dating to the Third Intermediate Period (11th to 7th centuries BC). A number of the spells which make up the Book continued to be separately inscribed on tomb walls and sarcophagi, as the spells from which they originated always had been.

There was no single or canonical Book of the Dead. The surviving papyri contain a varying selection of religious and magical texts and vary considerably in their illustration. Some people seem to have commissioned their own copies of the Book of the Dead, perhaps choosing the spells they thought most vital in their own progression to the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was most commonly written in hieroglyphic or hieratic script on a papyrus scroll, and often illustrated with vignettes 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.

  1. ^ Taylor 2010, p.54
  2. ^ The Egyptian Book of the Dead by Anonymous (2 Jun 2014) ...with an introduction by Paul Mirecki (VII)
  3. ^ Allen, 2000. p.316
  4. ^ Taylor 2010, p.55; or perhaps Utterances of Going Forth by Day, D'Auria 1988, p. 187

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