THE LITERATURE OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS E.A. WALLIS BUDGE, M.A.

• The Book of the Dead:
1. Summary of Chapters
2. Hymns, Litany, and Extracts from the Book of the Dead
3. The Great Judgment

"Book of the Dead" is the name that is now generally given to the large collection of "Chapters," or compositions, both short and long, which the ancient Egyptians cut upon the walls of the corridors and chambers in pyramids and rock-hewn tombs, and cut or painted upon the insides and outsides of coffins and sarcophagi, and wrote upon papyri, etc., which were buried with the dead in their tombs. The first modern scholar to study these Chapters was the eminent Frenchman, J. François Champollion; he rightly concluded that all of them were of a religious character, but he was wrong in calling the collection as a whole "Funerary Ritual." The name "Book of the Dead" is a translation of the title "Todtenbuch," given by Dr. R. Lepsius to his edition of a papyrus at Turin, containing a very long selection of the Chapters,[1] which he published in 1842. "Book of the Dead" is on the whole a very satisfactory general description of these Chapters, for they deal almost entirely with the dead, and they were written entirely for the dead. They have nothing to do with the worship of the gods by those who live on the earth, and such prayers and hymns as are incorporated with them were supposed to be said and sung by the dead for their own benefit. The author of the Chapters of the Book of the Dead was the god Thoth, whose greatness has already been described in Chapter I of this book. Thus they were considered to be of divine origin, and were held in the greatest reverence by the Egyptians at all periods of their long history. They do not all belong to the same period, for many of them allude to the dismemberment and [38]burning of the dead, customs that, though common enough in very primitive times, were abandoned soon after royal dynasties became established in Egypt.

It is probable that in one form or another many of the Chapters were in existence in the predynastic period,[1] but no copies of such primitive versions, if they ever existed, have come down to us. One Egyptian tradition, which is at least as old as the early part of the eighteenth dynasty (1600 B.C.), states that Chapters XXXB and LXIV were "discovered" during the reign of Semti, a king of the first dynasty, and another tradition assigns their discovery to the reign of Menkaurā (the Mycerinus of classical writers), a king of the fourth dynasty. It is certain, however, that the Egyptians possessed a Book of the Dead which was used for kings and royal personages, at least, early under the first dynasty, and that, in a form more or less complete, it was in use down to the time of the coming of Christianity into Egypt. The tombs of the officials of the third and fourth dynasties prove that the Book of Opening the Mouth and the Liturgy of Funerary Offerings (see pp. 13-18) were in use when they were made, and this being so it follows as a matter of course that at this period the Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the dead and in their immortality, that the religion of Osiris was generally accepted, that the efficacy of funerary offerings was unquestioned by the religious, and that men died believing that those who were righteous on earth would be rewarded in heaven, and that the evil-doer would be punished. The Pyramid Texts also prove that a Book of the Dead divided into chapters was in existence when they were written, for they mention the "Chapter of those who come forth (i.e. appear in heaven)," and the "Chapter of those who rise up" (Pepi I, l. 463), and the "Chapter of the betu incense," and the "Chapter of the natron incense" (Pepi I, 469). Whether these Chapters formed parts of the Pyramid Texts, or whether both they and the Pyramid Texts belonged to the Book of the Dead cannot be said, but it seems clear that the four Chapters [39]mentioned above formed part of a work belonging to a Book of the Dead that was older than the Pyramid Texts. This Book of the Dead was no doubt based upon the beliefs of the followers of the religion of Osiris, which began in the Delta and spread southwards into Upper Egypt. Its doctrines must have differed in many important particulars from those of the worshippers of the Sun-god of Heliopolis, whose priests preached the existence of a heaven of a solar character, and taught their followers to believe in the Sun-god Rā, and not in Temu, the ancient native god of Heliopolis, and not in the divine man Osiris. The exposition of the Heliopolitan creed is found in the Pyramid Texts, which also contain the proofs that before the close of the sixth dynasty the cult of Osiris had vanquished the cult of Rā, and that the religion of Osiris had triumphed.

Certain of the Chapters of the Book of the Dead (e.g. XXXB and LXIV) were written in the city of Thoth, or Khemenu, others were written in Anu, or Heliopolis, and others in Busiris and other towns of the Delta. Of the Book of the Dead that was in use under the fifth and sixth dynasties we have no copies, but many Chapters of the Recension in use under the eleventh and twelfth dynasties are found written in cursive hieroglyphs upon wooden sarcophagi, many of which may be seen in the British Museum. With the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty the Book of the Dead enters a new phase of its existence, and it became the custom to write it on rolls of papyrus, which were laid with the dead in their coffins, instead of on the coffins themselves. As the greater number of such rolls have been found in the tombs of priests and others at Thebes, the Recension that was in use from the eighteenth to the twenty-first dynasty (1600-900 B.C.) is commonly called the Theban Recension. This Recension, in its earliest form, is usually written with black ink in vertical columns of hieroglyphs, which are separated by black lines; the titles of the Chapters, the opening words of each section, and the Rubrics are written with red ink. About the middle of the eighteenth dynasty pictures painted in bright colours, "vignettes," [40]were added to the Chapters; these are very valuable, because they sometimes explain or give a clue to the meaning of parts of the texts that are obscure. Under the twentieth and twenty-first dynasties the writing of copies of the Book of the Dead in hieroglyphs went out of fashion, and copies written in the hieratic, or cursive, character took their place. These were ornamented with vignettes drawn in outline with black ink, and although the scribes who made them wrote certain sections in hieroglyphs, it is clear that they did not possess the skill of the great scribes who flourished between 1600 and 1050 B.C. The last Recension of the Book of the Dead known to us in a complete form is the Saīte Recension, which came into existence about 600 B.C., and continued in use from that time to the Roman Period. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods the priests composed several small works such as the "Book of Breathings" and the "Book of Traversing Eternity," which were based upon the Book of the Dead, and were supposed to contain in a highly condensed form all the texts that were necessary for salvation. At a still later period even more abbreviated texts came into use, and the Book of the Dead ended its existence in the form of a series of almost illegible scrawls traced upon scraps of papyrus only a few inches square.

Rolls of papyrus containing the Book of the Dead were placed: (1) In a niche in the wall of the mummy chamber; (2) in the coffin by the side of the deceased, or laid between the thighs or just above the ankles; (3) in hollow wooden figures of the god Osiris, or Ptah-Seker-Osiris, or in the hollow pedestals on which such figures stood.

The Egyptians believed that the souls of the dead on leaving this world had to traverse a vast and difficult region called the Tuat, which was inhabited by gods, devils, fiends, demons, good spirits, bad spirits, and the souls of the wicked, to say nothing of snakes, serpents, savage animals, and monsters, before they could reach the Elysian Fields, and appear in the presence of Osiris. The Tuat was like the African "bush," and had no roads through it. In primitive times the Egyptians thought that only those souls that were [41]provided with spells, incantations, prayers, charms, words of power, and amulets could ever hope to reach the Kingdom of Osiris. The spells and incantations were needed for the bewitchment of hostile beings of every kind; the prayers, charms, and words of power were necessary for making other kinds of beings that possessed great powers to help the soul on its journey, and to deliver it from foes; and the amulets gave the soul that was equipped with them strength, power, will, and knowledge to employ successfully every means of assistance that presented itself.

The Object of the Book of the Dead was to provide the dead man with all these spells, prayers, amulets, &c., and to enable him to overcome all the dangers and difficulties of the Tuat, and to reach Sekhet Aaru and Sekhet Hetep (the Elysian Fields), and to take his place among the subjects of Osiris in the Land of Everlasting Life. As time went on the beliefs of the Egyptians changed considerably about many important matters, but they never attempted to alter the Chapters of the Book of the Dead so as to bring them, if we may use the expression, "up to date." The religion of the eighteenth dynasty was far higher in its spiritual character generally than that of the twelfth dynasty, but the Chapters that were used under the twelfth dynasty were used under the eighteenth, and even under the twenty-sixth dynasty. In religion the Egyptian forgot nothing and abandoned nothing; what was good enough for his ancestors was good enough for him, and he was content to go into the next world relying for his salvation on the texts which he thought had procured their salvation. Thus the Book of the Dead as a whole is a work that reflects all the religious beliefs of the Egyptians from the time when they were half savages to the period of the final downfall of their power.

Vignette and Part of the XCIInd Chapter
of the Book of the Dead.
(Ani and his Soul are leaving the Tomb)
From the Papyrus of the Ani in the British Museum.