The religion which Jesus Christ was preaching was the ancient Egyptian religion(anscestral worshing) warning people that after death there is judgement."Don't be afraid of the people who kill the fresh but be afraid of the one who kills both the body and the heart.In the Judgement hierarchy ,there is no Jesus.Check the underworld Judgement in the Ancient Egyptian Religion.Most of these present religions are forgeries.The most architect of this forgery is Paul ,the charlatan, under the leadership of the Roman Emperors then.Note the book of Simon Peter ,Mary Magdalene,ETC have been excluded because they contain vital information and the truth.So today we have people ,preachers who still continue to spreads such lies.
The Book of the Dead is the modern name of an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC.[1] The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw[2] is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by Day".[3]
Another translation would be "Book of emerging forth into the Light".
The text consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead
person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts.
Some of the spells included 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).
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 Book of the Dead
was placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased. A number of
the spells which made up the Book were also inscribed on tomb walls and
sarcophagi.
[edit] Development
Part of the
Pyramid Texts, a precursor of the
Book of the Dead, inscribed on the tomb of
Teti
The
Book of the Dead developed from a tradition of funerary manuscripts dating back to the Egyptian
Old Kingdom. The first funerary texts were the
Pyramid Texts, first used in the Pyramid of King
Unas of the
5th dynasty, around 2400 BC.
[4]
These texts were written on the walls of the burial chambers within
pyramids, and were exclusively for the use of the Pharaoh (and, from the
6th dynasty, the Queen). The Pyramid Texts were written in an unusual
hieroglyphic
style; many of the hieroglyphs representing humans or animals were left
incomplete or drawn mutilated, most likely to prevent them causing any
harm to the dead pharaoh.
[5]
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.
[5]
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.
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.
[5]
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".
[6]
The
Book of the Dead first developed in
Thebes towards the beginning of the
Second Intermediate Period, around 1700 BC. The earliest known occurrence of the spells included in the
Book of the Dead is from the coffin of Queen
Mentuhotep, of the
13th dynasty,
where the new spells were included amongst older texts known from the
Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Some of the spells introduced at this
time claim an older provenance; for instance the rubric to spell 30B
states that it was discovered by the Prince Hordjedef in the reign of
King
Menkaure, many hundreds of years before it is attested in the archaeological record.
[7]
By the
17th dynasty, the
Book of the Dead
had become widespread not only for members of the royal family, but
courtiers and other officials as well. At this stage, the spells were
typically inscribed on linen shrouds wrapped around the dead, though
occasionally they are found written on coffins or on papyrus.
[8]
The
New Kingdom saw the
Book of the Dead develop and spread further. The famous Spell 125, the '
Weighing of the Heart', is first known from the reign of
Hatshepsut and
Tuthmose III, c.1475 BC. From this period onward the
Book of the Dead was typically written on a papyrus scroll, and the text illustrated with
vignettes. During the
19th dynasty in particular, the vignettes tended to be lavish, sometimes at the expense of the surrounding text.
[9] In the
Third Intermediate Period, the
Book of the Dead started to appear in
hieratic
script, as well as in the traditional hieroglyphics. The hieratic
scrolls were a cheaper version, lacking illustration apart from a single
vignette at the beginning, and were produced on smaller papyri. At the
same time, many burials used additional funerary texts, for instance the
Amduat.
[10]
During the
25th and
26th dynasties, the
Book of the Dead
was updated, revised and standardised. Spells were consistently ordered
and numbered for the first time. This standardised version is known
today as the 'Saite recension', after the Saite (26th) dynasty. In the
Late period and
Ptolemaic period, the
Book of the Dead
remained based on the Saite recension, though increasingly abbreviated
towards the end of the Ptolemaic period. New funerary texts appeared,
including the
Book of Breathing and
Book of Traversing Eternity. The last use of the
Book of the Dead was in the 1st century BC, though some artistic motifs drawn from it were still in use in Roman times.
[11]
[edit] Spells
The mystical Spell 17, from the
Papyrus of Ani. The vignette at the top illustrates, from left to right, the god
Heh as a representation of the Sea; a gateway to the realm of Osiris; the
Eye of Horus; the celestial cow
Mehet-Weret; and a human head rising from a coffin, guarded by the four Sons of Horus.
[12]
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
ro,
which can mean mouth, speech, a chapter of a book, spell, utterance, or
incantation. This ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought
between ritual speech and magical power.
[13] 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,
[14]
though no single manuscript contains them all. They served a range of
purposes. Some are intended to give the deceased mystical knowledge in
the afterlife, or perhaps to identify them with the gods: for instance,
Spell 17, an obscure and lengthy description of the god
Atum.
[15]
Others are incantations to ensure the different elements of the dead
person's being were preserved and reunited, and to give the deceased
control over the world around him. Still others protect the deceased
from various hostile forces, or guide him through the underworld past
various obstacles.
Famously, two spells also deal with the judgement of the deceased in the Weighing of the Heart ritual.
Such spells as 26-30, and sometimes spells 6 and 126 relate to the heart, and were inscribed on scarabs.
[16]
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.
[17] Indeed, there was little distinction for the Ancient Egyptians between magical and religious practice.
[18] 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;
[19] there is a sense in which action and speech were one and the same thing.
[18] 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.
[19] 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.
[20] 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 of them.
[21]
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.
[17]
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
be considered to have amuletic value.
[22] A number of spells also refer to Egyptian beliefs about the magical healing power of saliva.
[17]
[edit] 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.
[23] In fact, until
Paul Barguet's 1967 "pioneering study" of common themes between texts,
[24] Egyptologists concluded there was no internal structure at all.
[25] It is only from the Saite period (
26th dynasty) onwards that there is a defined order.
[26]
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, 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 are made to live again so that they may arise,
reborn, with the morning sun.
- Chapters 64–129 The deceased travels across the sky in the
sun ark 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.[25]
[edit] Egyptian concepts of death and afterlife
A depiction of the
ba, an element of the soul
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.
[edit] Preservation
One aspect of death was the disintegration of the various
kheperu, or modes of existence.
[27] Funerary rituals served to re-integrate these different aspects of being.
Mummification served to preserve and transform the physical body into a
sah, an idealised form with divine aspects;
[28] the
Book of the Dead contained spells aimed at preserving the body of the deceased, which may have been recited during the process of mummification.
[29]
The heart, which was regarded as the aspect of being which included
intelligence and memory, was also protected with spells, and in case
anything happened to the physical heart, it was common to bury jewelled
heart scarabs with a body to provide a replacement. The
ka,
or life-force, remained in the tomb with the dead body, and required
sustenance from offerings of food, water and incense. In case priests or
relatives failed to provide these offerings, Spell 105 ensured the
ka was satisfied.
[30]
The name of the dead person, which constituted their individuality and
was required for their continued existence, was written in many places
throughout the
Book, and spell 25 ensured the deceased would remember their own name.
[31] The
ba was a free-ranging spirit aspect of the deceased. It was the
ba,
depicted as a human-headed bird, which could "go forth by day" from the
tomb into the world; spells 61 and 89 acted to preserve it.
[32] Finally, the
shut, or shadow of the deceased, was preserved by spells 91, 92 and 188.
[33]
If all these aspects of the person could be variously preserved,
remembered, and satiated, then the dead person would live on in the form
of an
akh. An
akh was a blessed spirit with magical powers who would dwell among the gods.
[34]
[edit] Afterlife
The nature of the afterlife which the dead person 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.
[35] As well as joining the Gods, the
Book of the Dead also depicts the dead living on in the 'Field of Reeds', a paradisaical likeness of the real world.
[36]
The Field of Reeds is depicted as a lush, plentiful version of the
Egypt of the 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.
[37]
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.
Two 'gate spells'. On the top register, Ani and his wife face the 'seven
gates of the House of Osiris'. Below, they encounter ten of the 21
'mysterious portals of the House of Osiris in the Field of Reeds'. All
are guarded by unpleasant protectors.
[38]
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.
[39]
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.
[40] 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.
[41]
As well as these supernatural entities, there were also threats from
natural or supernatural animals, including crocodiles, snakes, and
beetles.
[42]
[edit] Judgement
If all the obstacles of the
Duat could be negotiated, the deceased would be judged in the
Weighing of the Heart ritual, depicted in Spell 125. The deceased was led by the god
Anubis into the presence of Osiris. There, the dead person swore that he had not committed any sin from a
list of 42 sins,
[43]
reciting a text known as the "Negative Confession". Then the dead
person's heart was weighed on a pair of scales, against the goddess
Ma'at, who embodied truth and justice. Ma'at was often represented by an ostrich feather, the hieroglyphic sign for her name.
[44]
At this point, there was a risk that the deceased's heart would bear
witness, owning up to sins committed in life; Spell 30B guarded against
this eventuality. If the scales balanced, this meant the deceased had
led a good life. Anubis would take them to Osiris and they would find
their place in the afterlife, becoming
maa-kheru, meaning "vindicated" or "true of voice".
[45] If the heart was out of balance with Ma'at, then another fearsome beast called
Ammit, the Devourer, stood ready to eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and unpleasant end.
[46]
This scene is remarkable not only for its vividness but as one of the
only parts of the Book of the Dead with any explicit moral content. The
judgement 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".
[47] While the
Ten Commandments
of Judaeo-Christian ethics are rules of conduct laid down by divine
revelation, the Negative Confession is more a divine enforcement of
everyday morality.
[48]
Views differ among Egyptologists about how far the Negative Confession
represents a moral absolute, with ethical purity being necessary for
progress to the Afterlife. John Taylor points out the wording of Spells
30B and 125 suggests a pragmatic approach to morality; by preventing the
heart from contradicting him with any inconvenient truths, it seems
that the deceased could enter the afterlife even if their life had not
been entirely pure.
[46] Ogden Goelet says "without an exemplary and moral existence, there was no hope for a successful afterlife",
[47]
while Geraldine Pinch suggests that the Negative Confession is
essentially similar to the spells protecting from demons, and that the
success of the Weighing of the Heart depended on the mystical knowledge
of the true names of the judges rather than on the deceased's moral
behaviour.
[49]
[edit] Producing a Book of the Dead
Part of the
Book of the Dead of
Pinedjem II. The text is
hieratic, except for hieroglyphics in the vignette. The use of red pigment, and the joins between papyrus sheets, are also visible
A
Book of the Dead papyrus was produced to order by scribes. They
were commissioned by people in preparation for their own funeral, 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,
[50] perhaps half the annual pay of a labourer.
[51] 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.
[52]
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 10 copies belonging to men for every one for a woman.
However, during the Third Intermediate Period, 2/3 were for women; and
women owned roughly a third of the hieratic paypri from the Late and
Ptolemaic Periods.
[53]
The dimensions of a
Book of the Dead could vary widely; the
longest is 40m long while some are as short as 1m. 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.
[52]
Books were often prefabricated in funerary workshops, with spaces being
left for the name of the deceased to be written in later.
[54] 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.
[51]
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.
[55]
From the
21st Dynasty onward, more copies of the
Book of the Dead are found in
hieratic
script. The calligraphy is similar to that of other hieratic
manuscripts of the New Kingdom; the text is written in in horizontal
lines across wide columns (often the column size corresponds to the size
of the papyrus sheets of which a scroll is made up). Occasionally a
hieratic
Book of the Dead contains captions in hieroglyphic.
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 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.
[56] The black ink used was based on
carbon, and the red ink on
ochre, in both cases mixed with water.
[57]
The style and nature of the vignettes used to illustrate a
Book of the Dead varies widely. Some contain lavish colour illustrations, even making use of
gold leaf. Others contain only line drawings, or one simple illustration at the opening.
[58]
Book of the Dead papyri were often the work of several different scribes and artists whose work was literally pasted together.
[52]
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.
[59] 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.
[60]
[edit] Discovery, translation, interpretation and preservation
The existence of the
Book of the Dead was known as early as the
Middle Ages, well before its contents could be understood. Since it was
found in tombs, it was evidently a document of a religious nature, and
this led to the widespread misapprehension that the
Book of the Dead was the equivalent of a
Bible or
Qu'ran.
[61]
The first modern facsimile of a
Book of the Dead was produced in 1805 and included in the
Description de l'Égypte produced by the staff of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt. In 1822,
Jean Francois Champollion began to translate hieroglyphic text; he examined some of the
Book of the Dead papyri and identified them as a funerary ritual.
[62]
In 1842
Karl Richard Lepsius published a translation of a manuscript dated to the
Ptolemaic era and coined the name "
Book of The Dead". He also introduced the spell numbering system which is still in use, identifying 165 different spells.
[14] Lepsius promoted the idea of a comparative edition of the
Book of the Dead, drawing on all relevant manuscripts. This project was undertaken by
Edouard Naville,
starting in 1875 and completed in 1886, producing a three-volume work
including a selection of vignettes for every one of the 186 spells he
worked with, the variations of the text for every spell, and commentary.
In 1876,
Samuel Birch of the
British Museum published a photographic copy of the
papyrus of Nebseny.
[63]
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,
though the latter are now considered inaccurate and out-of-date.
[64] More recent translations in English have been published by T. G. Allen (1974) and
Raymond O. Faulkner (1972).
[65] As more work has been done on the
Book of the Dead, more spells have been identified, and the total now stands at 192.
[14]
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.
[66]
Notable rock band
The Grateful Dead
purportedly were reading over a translation of parts of the Book of the
Dead when they came across the phrases, "We now return our souls to the
creator, as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness. Let our chant
fill the void in order that others may know. In the land of the night
the ship of the sun is drawn by the grateful dead." The name stuck
