Egyptian Book of the Dead
Anonymous, c. 1550 BCE
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The Book of the Dead is a loose collection of spells, hymns, prayers and magical names that ancient Egyptians placed with the dead to help them through the afterlife. The version here is E. A. Wallis Budge's introduction, which explains what the collection is, why Thoth is credited as its author, and how Osiris rules the dead. Its centre is the judgment, where the heart is weighed in scales and Thoth records the verdict. Budge also describes the Kingdom of Osiris, a farmland of canals and fields, and the opening chapters of the great papyri.
Where it happens
- Thebes The Papyrus of Ani was found in the tomb of the scribe Ani here in 1888.12
- Abydos After the twelfth dynasty theologians placed the Kingdom of Osiris near this city in Upper Egypt.3
- British Museum, London Holds the Papyrus of Ani, which Budge acquired and sent there in 1888.2
- Strasbourg An army paymaster brought a thirty foot papyrus here, which was published in Paris in 1805 and helped fix the name Book of the Dead.3
Through time
- 1475 BCThe Weighing of the Heart, spell 125, is first known from the reigns of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III.1
- 1250 BCThe Papyrus of Ani is made for a Theban scribe in the Nineteenth Dynasty.2
- 1805A long illustrated papyrus is published in Paris and studied as the funerary ritual of the Egyptians.3
- 1842Lepsius publishes a Ptolemaic papyrus, names it the Book of the Dead and numbers 165 spells.1
- 1867Samuel Birch of the British Museum publishes the first extensive English translation.1
- 1875Naville begins his comparative edition of the spells, which he finishes in 1886.1
- 1888The Papyrus of Ani is found at Thebes and bought by Budge for the British Museum.2
Who is in it, and behind it
Thoth subject
The god of writing and justice, credited in the text as the author of the funerary spells and the dead person's advocate at the judgment.3
Osiris subject
King of the dead, who judges souls in his hall and rules a kingdom of fields in the underworld.3
Ani scribe
A Theban scribe for whom the finest surviving Book of the Dead scroll was made around 1250 BCE.2
E. A. Wallis Budge translator
British Museum Egyptologist whose editions and English translations of the Papyrus of Ani are still widely read.12
Karl Richard Lepsius subject
Egyptologist who coined the name Todtenbuch in 1842 and introduced the numbering of spells still in use.1
Édouard Naville subject
Compiled a three-volume comparative edition of the spells between 1875 and 1886.1
Samuel Birch translator
British Museum scholar who published the first extensive English translation in 1867.1
Jean-François Champollion subject
Announced his decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822. Budge says he was among the French scholars who described the papyrus published in 1805 as a funerary ritual and later, with others, used the title Le Livre des Morts; Wikipedia credits Lepsius with coining the name in 1842.13
What it is about
Weighing the heart
The dead person's heart is weighed in scales against the feather of truth, and Thoth records the result.13
Thoth as author and advocate
Thoth is the writer of the spells and also pleads for the dead before Osiris, as he once did for Osiris against Set.3
A kit, not a book
No single canonical text exists. Each papyrus holds a different selection of spells and pictures, sometimes ordered by the buyer.13
A farm after death
The blessed live in a flat land of canals and fields, where they plough and reap much as they did in Egypt.3
A name from tomb robbers
The modern title translates what Egyptian tomb robbers called any papyrus found with a mummy, so it does not describe the contents.3
In its own words
is the title now commonly given to the great collection of funerary texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes composed for the benefit of the dead
These titles are merely translations of the name given by the Egyptian tomb-robbers to every roll of inscribed papyrus which they found with mummies, namely, "Kitâb-al-Mayyit," "Book of the dead man," or "Kitâb al-Mayyitun," "Book of the dead" ( plur
He was the inventor of physical and moral Law and became the personification of JUSTICE; and as the Companies of the Gods of Heaven, and Earth, and the Other World appointed him to "weigh the words and deeds" of men, and his verdicts were unalterable, he became more powerful in the Other World than O
The Egyptians were not satisfied with the mere possession of the texts of Thoth, when their souls were being weighed in the Great Scales in the Judgment Hall of Osiris, but they also wished Thoth to act as their Advocate on this dread occasion and to prove their innocence as he had proved that of Osi
When Set was destroyed Osiris departed from this world to the kingdom which the gods had given him and began to reign over the dead
The oldest religious texts suggest that the Egyptians always associated the Last Judgment with the weighing of the heart in a pair of scales, and in the illustrated papyri of the Book of the Dead great prominence is always given to the vignettes in which this weighing is being carried out
In one part of it were several small islands, and on one of them Osiris was supposed to dwell with his saints
All the great papyri of the Book of the Dead begin with a HYMN TO RĀ, who from the period of the IVth dynasty was the "King of the Gods" of Egypt
The shape of the book
12 chapters, 13,126 words. Point at a bar.
How it came to be here
The spells grew over about a thousand years. Some come from the older Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts, and the weighing of the heart is first known from about 1475 BC. Each papyrus was a custom copy, so no single book exists. The name came from tomb robbers and early Egyptologists, and in 1842 Karl Richard Lepsius gave it the German form Todtenbuch and numbered the spells. Samuel Birch published the first long English translation in 1867. E. A. Wallis Budge, his successor at the British Museum, made editions of the Papyrus of Ani, which is the source of the pictures here.
Free to read elsewhere
- Project Gutenberg ebook #7145
- Open Library search editions you can borrow or read
- HathiTrust search full-view scans
- Standard Ebooks search
Sources
- Book of the Dead (Wikipedia)
- Papyrus of Ani (Wikipedia)
- The Book of the Dead (Project Gutenberg ebook 7145)
Text: PG 7145, 69566 | translator: E. A. Wallis Budge (7145); Renouf and Naville (69566). US public domain (Project Gutenberg licence).