The book of the dead E-Book

E. A. Wallis Budge

• Herausgeber: E. A. Wallis Budge
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript with cursive hieroglyphs and illustrations created c. 1250 BCE, in the 19th dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Egyptians compiled an individualized book for certain people upon their death, called the Book of Going Forth by Day, more commonly known as The book of the dead, typically containing declarations and spells to help the deceased in their afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani.


It was stolen from an Egyptian government storeroom in 1888 by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, as described in his two-volume By Nile and Tigris, for the collection of the British Museum where it remains today. Before shipping the manuscript to England, Budge cut the seventy-eight foot scroll into thirty-seven sheets of nearly equal size, damaging the scroll's integrity at a time when technology had not yet allowed the pieces to be put back together.


This Papyrus of Ani, a full version of the Theban recension, is presented here by Dr. Budge, who later became perhaps the world's most renowned Egyptologist. Reproduced in full are a clear copy of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, an interlinear transliteration of their sounds (as reconstructed), a word-for-word translation, and separately a complete smooth translation. All this is preceded by an introduction of more than 150 pages. As a result of this multiple apparatus the reader has a unique opportunity to savor all aspects of The book of the dead, or as it is otherwise known, The Book of the Great Awakening.

Leseprobe

E. A. Wallis Budge

The book of the dead

First digital edition 2016 by Anna Ruggieri

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I - The Title.

CHAPTER II - The Preservation of the Mummified Body in the Tomb by Thoth.

CHAPTER III - The Book Per-t em hru, or [The Chapters of] Coming forth by (or, into) the Day, commonly called the "Book of the Dead."

CHAPTER IV - Thoth, the Author of the Book of the Dead.

CHAPTER V - Thoth and Osiris.

CHAPTER VI - Osiris as Judge of the Dead and King of the Under World.

CHAPTER VII - The Judgment of Osiris.

CHAPTER VIII - The Kingdom of Osiris.

CHAPTER IX - A Short Description of the "Doors" or Chapters of the Book of the Dead.

CHAPTER I - The Title.

"Book of the Dead" is the title now commonly given to the great collection of funerary texts which theancient Egyptian scribes composed for the benefit of the dead. These consist of spells and incantations, hymns and litanies, magical formulae and names, words of power and prayers, and they are found cut or painted on walls of pyramids and tombs, and painted on coffins and sarcophagi and rolls of papyri. The title "Book of the Dead" is somewhat unsatisfactory and misleading, for the texts neither form a connected work nor belong to one period; they are miscellaneous in character, and tell us nothing aboutthe lives and works of the dead with whom they were buried. Moreover, the Egyptians possessed many funerary works that might rightly be called "Books of the Dead," but none of them bore a name that could be translated by the title "Book of the Dead." Thistitle was given to the great collection of funerary texts in the first quarter of the nineteenth century by the pioneer Egyptologists, who possessed no exact knowledge of their contents. They were familiar with the rolls of papyrus inscribed in the hieroglyphic and the hieratic character, for copies of several had been published, [1] but the texts in them were short and fragmentary. The publication of the Facsimile [2] of the Papyrus of Peta-Amen-neb-nest-taui [3] by M. Cadet in 1805 made a long hieroglyphic text and numerous coloured vignettes available for study, and the French Egyptologists described it as a copy of the "Rituel Funéraire" of the ancient Egyptians. Among these was Champollion le Jeune, but later, on his return from Egypt, he and others called it "Le Livre des Morts," "The Book of the Dead," "Das Todtenbuch," etc. 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.). These men knew nothing of the contents of such a roll, and all they meant to say was that it was "a dead man's book," and that it was found in his coffin with him.

CHAPTER II - The Preservation of the Mummified Body in the Tomb by Thoth.

The objects found in the graves of the predynastic Egyptians, i.e., vessels of food, flint knives and other weapons, etc., prove that these early dwellers in the Nile Valley believed in some kind of a future existence. But as the art of writing was, unknown to them their graves contain no inscriptions, and we can only infer from texts of the dynastic period what their ideas about the Other World were. It is clear that they did not consider it of greatimportance to preserve the dead body in as complete and perfect state as possible, for in many of their graves the heads, hands and feet have been found severed from the trunks and lying at some distance from them. On the other hand, the dynastic Egyptians, either as the result of a difference in religious belief, or under the influence of invaders who had settled in their country, attached supreme importance to the preservation and integrity of the dead body, and they adopted every means known to them to prevent its dismemberment and decay. They cleansed it and embalmed it with drugs, spices and balsams; they anointed it with aromatic oils and preservative fluids; they swathed it in hundreds of yards of linen bandages; and then they sealed it up in a coffin orsarcophagus, which they laid in a chamber hewn in the bowels of the mountain. All these things were done to protect the physical body against damp, dry rot and decay, and against the attacks of moth, beetles, worms and wild animals. But these were not theonly enemies of the dead against which precautions had to be taken, for both the mummified body and the spiritual elements which had inhabited it upon earth had to be protected from a multitude of devils and fiends, and from the powers of darkness generally. These powers of evil had hideous and terrifying shapes and forms, and their haunts were well known, for they infested the region through which the road of the dead lay when passing from this world to the Kingdom of Osiris. The "great gods" were afraidof them, and were obliged to protect themselves by the use of spells and magical names, and words of power, which were composed and written down by Thoth. In fact it was believed in very early times in Egypt that Ra the Sun-god owed his continued existenceto the possession of a secret name with which Thoth had provided him. And each morning the rising sun was menaced by a fearful monster called Aapep, which lay hidden under the place of sunrise waiting to swallow up the solar disk. It was impossible, evenfor the Sun-god, to destroy this "Great Devil," but by reciting each morning the powerful spell with which Thoth had provided him he was able to paralyse all Aapep's limbs and to rise upon this world. Since then the "great gods," even though benevolently disposed towards them, were not able to deliver the dead from the devils that lived upon the "bodies, souls, spirits, shadows and hearts of the dead," the Egyptians decided to invoke the aid of Thoth on behalf of their dead and to place them under the protection of his almighty spells. Inspired by Thoth the theologians of a [...]