Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, British Museum, review
A new show at the British Museum brings us face to face with our darkest imaginings, says Richard Dorment.
Most of us learnt about Egyptian burial practices at school – how the mummified corpse was entombed along with food, wine, furniture, bowls and eating utensils to stave off hunger, thirst, and boredom in the afterlife. I have to admit that even as a 12-year-old I found the Egyptian practice of taking everyday objects with them into the hereafter lacking imagination. If you need the same stuff in the next world as you do in this, I reasoned, death must have all the awe and mystery of a camping trip: wherever you might end up, you might as well make yourself comfortable along the way.
Now I know better. As you’ll discover in the British Museum’s autumn blockbuster, packing the celestial rucksack was only the start of the adventure.
For as well as the mummy cases, funerary statuettes, amulets and scarabs found in the pyramids, archaeologists also discovered “pyramid texts” provided for the use of the dead on their journey into the unknown. Written with reed pens on papyrus and often enclosed in wooden containers, or else inscribed on the walls of tombs or painted on the covers of coffins, these writings are known collectively as the Book of the Dead. Whereas the household utensils unearthed in Egyptian tombs are essentially banal, these rich texts draw us deep into the realms of the unconscious, where we come face to face with the ancient world’s darkest, strangest, and most fearful imaginings.
Once mummification was completed and the mummy placed in the sarcophagus, a priest used an adze ritualistically to “open” the dead man’s mouth and enable his winged soul (ba) to enter and leave the mortal remains at will.
Now the real journey could begin.
The Book of the Dead is not a single volume, like the Bible, but a collection of 200 magic spells and incantations which were believed to protect the dead person from evil and to guide him on his passage through a kingdom of the dead. Each spell was intended to be used in a specific situation the dead person might encounter on the tortuous path to eternal bliss....
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Most of us learnt about Egyptian burial practices at school – how the mummified corpse was entombed along with food, wine, furniture, bowls and eating utensils to stave off hunger, thirst, and boredom in the afterlife. I have to admit that even as a 12-year-old I found the Egyptian practice of taking everyday objects with them into the hereafter lacking imagination. If you need the same stuff in the next world as you do in this, I reasoned, death must have all the awe and mystery of a camping trip: wherever you might end up, you might as well make yourself comfortable along the way.
Now I know better. As you’ll discover in the British Museum’s autumn blockbuster, packing the celestial rucksack was only the start of the adventure.
For as well as the mummy cases, funerary statuettes, amulets and scarabs found in the pyramids, archaeologists also discovered “pyramid texts” provided for the use of the dead on their journey into the unknown. Written with reed pens on papyrus and often enclosed in wooden containers, or else inscribed on the walls of tombs or painted on the covers of coffins, these writings are known collectively as the Book of the Dead. Whereas the household utensils unearthed in Egyptian tombs are essentially banal, these rich texts draw us deep into the realms of the unconscious, where we come face to face with the ancient world’s darkest, strangest, and most fearful imaginings.
Once mummification was completed and the mummy placed in the sarcophagus, a priest used an adze ritualistically to “open” the dead man’s mouth and enable his winged soul (ba) to enter and leave the mortal remains at will.
Now the real journey could begin.
The Book of the Dead is not a single volume, like the Bible, but a collection of 200 magic spells and incantations which were believed to protect the dead person from evil and to guide him on his passage through a kingdom of the dead. Each spell was intended to be used in a specific situation the dead person might encounter on the tortuous path to eternal bliss....