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 BCE.[5] 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.[6] 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.[6] 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.[6]
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,[44] reciting a text known as the "Negative Confession". Then the dead person's heart was weighed on a pair of scales, against the goddess Maat, who embodied truth and justice. Maat was often represented by an ostrich feather, the hieroglyphic sign for her name.[45] 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".[46] If the heart was out of balance with Maat, then another fearsome beast called Ammit, the Devourer, stood ready to eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and rather unpleasant end.[47]
Hieroglyphic Vocabulary to the Book of the Dead (Egypt) download pdf
Some of the texts that consist this book were carved on the stones of the pyramids, others were inked on the sarcophagi in which the pharaohs were buried, and copies of the spells, incantations, and hymns were also written on papyrus and buried along with the bodies of the dead, for the departed soul to be ready to use them in the underworld.
The Literature of ancient Egypt is the product of a periodof about four thousand years, and it was written in threekinds of writing, which are called hieroglyphic, hieratic, anddemotic. In the first of these the characters were picturesof objects, in the second the forms of the characters weremade as simple as possible so that they might be writtenquickly, and in the third many of them lost their pictureform altogether and became mere symbols. Egyptianwriting was believed to have been invented by the godTehuti, or Thoth, and as this god was thought to be a formof the mind and intellect and wisdom of the God who createdthe heavens and the earth, the picture characters, or hieroglyphsas they are called, were held to be holy, or divine, orsacred. Certain religious texts were thought to possessspecial virtue when written in hieroglyphs, and the chaptersand sections of books that were considered to have beencomposed by Thoth himself were believed to possess verygreat power, and to be of the utmost benefit to the deadwhen they were written out for them in hieroglyphs, andburied with them in their coffins. Thoth also invented thescience of numbers, and as he fixed the courses of the sun,moon, and stars, and ordered the seasons, he was thoughtto be the first astronomer. He was the lord of wisdom,and the possessor of all knowledge, both heavenly and[2]earthly, divine and human; and he was the author of everyattempt made by man to draw, paint, and carve. As thelord and maker of books, and as the skilled scribe, he wasthe clerk of the gods, and kept the registers wherein thedeeds of men were written down. The deep knowledge ofThoth enabled him to find out the truth at all times, andthis ability caused the Egyptians to assign to him the positionof Chief Judge of the dead. A very ancient legendstates that Thoth acted in this capacity in the great trialthat took place in heaven when Osiris was accused of certaincrimes by his twin-brother Set, the god of evil. Thothexamined the evidence, and proved to the gods that thecharges made by Set were untrue, and that Osiris hadspoken the truth and that Set was a liar. For this reasonevery Egyptian prayed that Thoth might act for him ashe did for Osiris, and that on the day of the Great JudgmentThoth might preside over the weighing of his heartin the Balance. All the important religious works in allperiods were believed to have been composed either byhimself, or by holy scribes who were inspired by him. Theywere believed to be sources of the deepest wisdom, the likeof which existed in no other books in the world. And it isprobably to these books that Egypt owed her fame for learningand wisdom, which spread throughout all the civilisedworld. The "Books of Thoth," which late popular traditionin Egypt declared to be as many as 36,525 in number,were revered by both natives and foreigners in a way whichit is difficult for us in these days to realise. The scribes whostudied and copied these books were also specially honoured,for it was believed that the spirit of Thoth, the twice-greatand thrice-great god, dwelt in them. The profession of thescribe was considered to be most honourable, and its rewardswere great, for no rank and no dignity were too high for theeducated scribe. Thoth appears in the papyri and on themonuments as an ibis-headed man, and his companion isusually a dog-headed ape called "Asten." In the Hall ofthe Great Judgment he is seen holding in one hand a reedwith which he is writing on a palette the result of the[3]weighing of the heart of the dead man in the Balance. Thegods accepted the report of Thoth without question, andrewarded the good soul and punished the bad according tohis statement.
"Pyramid Texts" is the name now commonly given to thelong hieroglyphic inscriptions that are cut upon the walls ofthe chambers and corridors of five pyramids at Sakkārah.The oldest of them was built for Unas, a king of the fifthdynasty, and the four others were built for Teta, Pepi I,Merenrā, and Pepi II, kings of the sixth dynasty. Accordingto the calculation of Dr. Brugsch, they were all builtbetween 3300 and 3150 B.C., but more recent theories assignthem to a period about 700 years later. These Texts representthe oldest religious literature known to us, for theycontain beliefs, dogmas, and ideas that must be thousandsof years older than the period of the sixth dynasty whenthe bulk of them was drafted for the use of the masons whocut them inside the pyramids. It is probable that certainsections of them were composed by the priests for thebenefit of the dead in very primitive times in Egypt, whenthe art of writing was unknown, and that they were repeatedeach time a king died. They were first learned by heartby the funerary priests, and then handed on from mouthto mouth, generation after generation, and at length afterthe Egyptians had learned to write, and there was dangerof their being forgotten, they were committed to writing.And just as these certain sections were absorbed into thegreat body of Pyramid Texts of the sixth dynasty, soportions of the Texts of the sixth dynasty were incorporatedinto the great Theban Book of the Dead, and theyappear in papyri that were written more than 2000 yearslater. The Pyramid Texts supply us with much informationconcerning the religious beliefs of the primitive[10]Egyptians, and also with many isolated facts of historythat are to be found nowhere else, but of the meaning ofa very large number of passages we must always remainignorant, because they describe states of civilisation, andconditions of life and climate, of which no modern personcan form any true conception. Besides this the meaningsof many words are unknown, the spelling is strange and ofteninexplicable, the construction of the sentence is frequentlyunlike anything known in later texts, and the ideas thatthey express are wholly foreign to the minds of studentsof to-day, who are in every way aliens to the primitiveEgyptian African whose beliefs these words represent. Thepyramids at Sakkārah in which the Pyramid Texts arefound were discovered by the Frenchman, Mariette, in 1880.Paper casts of the inscriptions, which are deeply cut in thewalls and painted green, were made for Professor Maspero,the Director of the Service of Antiquities in Egypt, andfrom these he printed an edition in hieroglyphic type ofall five texts, and added a French translation of the greaterpart of them. Professor Maspero correctly recognised thetrue character of these old-world documents, and his translationdisplayed an unrivalled insight into the true meaningof many sections of them. The discovery and study ofother texts and the labours of recent workers have clearedup passages that offered difficulties to him, but his workwill remain for a very long time the base of all investigations.
When the Pyramid Texts were written men believed thatthe welfare of souls and spirits in the Other World could besecured by the prayers of the living. Hence we find inthem numerous prayers for the dead, and hymns addressedto the gods on their behalf, and extracts from many kindsof ancient religious books. When these were recited, andofferings made both to the gods and to the dead, it wasconfidently believed that the souls of the dead receivedspecial consideration and help from the gods, and from allthe good spirits who formed their train. These prayers arevery important from many points of view, but specially sofrom the fact that they prove that the Egyptians who livedunder the sixth dynasty attached more importance to themthan to magical spells and incantations. In other words,the Egyptians had begun to reject their belief in the efficacyof magic, and to develop a belief of a more spiritual character.There were many reasons for this development, but themost important was the extraordinary growth of the influenceof the religion of Osiris, which had before the close ofthe period of the sixth dynasty spread all over Egypt. Thisreligion promised to all who followed it, high or low, richor poor, a life in the world beyond the grave, after a resurrectionthat was made certain to them through the sufferings,death, and resurrection of Osiris, who was the incarnation[13]of the great primeval god who created the heavens and theearth. A few extracts illustrating the general contents ofthe Pyramid Texts may now be given. 2ff7e9595c
Comments