The spells and the accompanying images (vignettes) were copied down on papyrus, on the tomb walls, on the coffins as well as on other magical objects that accompanied the dead in the afterlife. Yes, the Book of the Dead had to protect the body and spiritual parts of the dead. So, the ideal was that the person was mummified and the Book of the Dead, in some form or another, was included in the tomb? How were these images, spells and amulets included in the tomb? But they strongly believed in the afterlife. The Egyptians understood that no one returns from the dead.
They were also obsessed with death in the sense that they believed death was a new beginning and therefore they had to prepare for the journey in the netherworld.
#A home in the firmament free#
Even what we call today “slaves” could become free if they were acting well and respected the Pharaoh’s laws or if they could show particular skills. The ancient Egyptians had a good life according to the social class they belonged to. Can we assume that life was good, or is that tinged with propaganda? And were the Egyptians obsessed with death?
#A home in the firmament plus#
In contrast to other ancient peoples, the Egyptians seem to have had a good life, plus the afterlife was an ideal reflection of life on earth. The Book of the Dead papyri were kept in the tomb with the mummified body of the dead and therefore many of them have been preserved in good conditions until the tombs and coffins were open and the papyri brought to the museums around the world. Papyrus is a plant that grew in Egypt and was used to make a particular kind of paper that the ancient Egyptian scribes used to write down all sorts of documents. What’s papyrus? Why did the Books of the Dead last, sometimes in excellent vivid condition? There are thousands of extant Books of the Dead. They are therefore traditional texts but there was freedom to re-arrange and to produce new variants of the earlier spells. The ancient Egyptian theologians and priests composed the spells, which derived from the tradition of magical spells for the dead, which started with the Pyramid Texts. Who created these Books and for whom? Was there much freedom in creating them? The objects where Book of the Dead spells and vignettes (illustrations) occur are part of the funerary equipment used for the burial rituals: papyri first of all, mummy bandages, linen, coffins, stelas, amulets, canopic boxes (used to keep the soft interiors of the body before mummification) and statuettes selections of Book of the Dead spells occur also on tomb and temple walls.
The corpus is attested for a very long span of time, from the beginning of the New Kingdom (1500 BC) to the Greco-Roman period (332 BC – AD 380). Detail of ancient Book of the Dead (1070 BC), Thebes – Egypt – Image Credit : Paolo Gallo The Egyptians called this collection “peret em heru”, “going out by day or in the sunlight”, which was a metaphor for rebirth and eternal life after the liminal stage of death. The Book of the Dead is the name given to a corpus of ancient Egyptian magical, ritual and funerary texts, aiming at protecting the body of the deceased and to accompany him or her during the journey in the regions of the Duat, the ancient Egyptian netherworld. What is the Egyptian Book of the Dead? Is that the original name? And what is the time period for its prominence? Does the Book of the Dead draw upon older Egyptian material, or is it something very original? At Berkeley I teach courses on the ancient Egyptian language, religion and recently also about Digital Egyptology, in particular on 3D technology applied to the ancient Egyptian heritage preservation. I have studied Egyptology first at the Oriental Institute in Naples, then received my PhD in Egyptology at Leiden, in the Netherlands. I always loved archaeology, the Arabic and African world. How did you get interested in Egyptology? And what is your background? And what do you teach at Berkeley?
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