The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, commonly
known as the Book of the Dead, is a collection of
hymns and incantations taken from the papyri
buried with ancient Egyptians to help deceased
souls navigate the afterlife. Altogether, the Book of
the Dead consists of 189 chapters that describe
Egyptian religious beliefs about life and death. The
Book of the Dead not only describes the pathways,
laws, and guardians of the gates of the afterlife but
also contains the essential truths that would admit
a soul to heaven. Knowledge was the way the soul
became eternal, as texts from the sixth dynasty
suggest with their simple advice: “Live your life and
you will never die.”
The Book of the Dead was never a single entity
or text but rather a template of prayers, hymns, incantations,
instructions, and addresses to the divine.
Scribes kept a principal copy,which they were
commissioned to selectively reproduce and personalize
for the person who had died. Those preparing
in advance could select the chapters and illustrations
they wished to be included. Texts that have
been recovered from Egyptian burials give scholars
an idea of the chapters that composed the original
Book of the Dead, as well as an understanding of
how Egyptian funerary practices and religious beliefs
developed over time.
The ancient Egyptians believed that the Book of
the Dead was written about 50,000 B.C. by Tehuty,
one of the first created beings, who brought language
and speech into the world. The written language
of the ancient Egyptians consisted of
pictorial characters or symbols called hieroglyphs.
A cursive form of hieroglyphics, called hieratic, was
also used. Certain versions of the Book of the Dead
are composed entirely in hieroglyphics and some in
a combination of hieroglyphs and hieratic.
The earliest Egyptian funerary texts, called the
Pyramid Texts, appear as inscriptions on chamber
walls and passages of the pyramid of Wenis, the
last ruler of the fifth dynasty, ca. 2345 B.C. The language
of the texts suggests that these burial inscriptions
had already been in use for centuries. In
later dynasties, these standard inscriptions were
copied onto many other pyramids and monuments,
even sarcophagi, and are collected and
printed as the Coffin Texts. The Pyramid and Coffin
Texts precede the papyrus copies of the Book of
the Dead, the earliest of which date to the mid-
15th century B.C.
The oldest papyri, such as those of Nu, Userhat,
Kha, and Yuya, tend to be brief, with a small
number of chapters and few illustrations. The Papyrus
of Hunefer, discovered at Thebes in 1852
and named for the man it was written for (and
perhaps by), the chief scribe of Pharaoh Seti I,
dates to 1400 B.C. It is perhaps the shortest text of
the Book of the Dead, containing only three chapters,
but it is one of the most beautifully illustrated.
The chapters of the Book of the Dead known today
are an arrangement imposed by Egyptologists,
which provides a unified and comprehensive view
of the Egyptian afterlife but sometimes fails to capture
the unique beauty and distinct style of the individual
papyri.
Critical Analysis
Egyptian belief sometimes varied slightly by city or
dynasty, but on the whole they believed that the
world was divided into three realms: Ta,which was
earth or the world of the living; Nut, the world
above, a spiritual realm or heaven; and Dwat, the
netherworld, or the world between. This passage
from the Papyrus of Ani best summarizes the essential
belief regarding the eternal nature of the
soul:
Men do not live once, in order to vanish forever.
They live several lives in different places
but not always in this world, and between each
life there is a veil of shadows.
Since the soul was able to move between varying
states of being, death was simply a passageway to
the Dwat, the world of shadows. Reciting and reenacting
the directions of the Book of the Dead, it
was believed, guided souls through the Dwat and
led them to the Garden of Reeds, a place of everlasting
peace inhabited by perfected souls. Those
souls who were not perfected reincarnated into living
forms and might return to Ta or earth as humans,
animals, or insects, there to continue
acquiring the knowledge that would help them
succeed at their next judgment.
The Egyptians called the collection The Chapters
of Coming Forth by Day because these writings
represented the beginning of a new phase of
life. During the time of the Old Kingdom, as the
Pyramid Texts suggest, departed souls perambulated
at will among the stars. Later, during the
Middle Kingdom, Osiris emerged as the king of
the underworld. Prayers in the Book of the Dead
largely address him for protection and guidance,
and most copies open with a hymn addressed to
Osiris, as do these lines from the Papyrus of
Hunefer:
Maker of heaven and earth, adoration to you!
O, you are embraced by Maat at the two seasons.
You are striding over heaven with joy.
(1.4–5, trans. by Ramses Seleen)
While the earliest funerary inscriptions addressed
a single divine being called Amen-Ra, as
beliefs evolved over the span of several centuries,
other names and divine personifications developed,
among them Isis, the patroness of fertility
and love; Horus, the redeemer of good deeds, and
Anubis; the guardian of secret knowledge. Part of
the complexity of Egyptian spirituality is its ability
to absorb and contain its own history without apparent
contradiction. Chapters of the Book of the
Dead simply expanded to address evolving beliefs.
Praises in homage to Osiris were part of the
protective function of the Book of the Dead, to
help the traveling soul reach its destination safely.
There were dangers in the otherworld, one of them
being that the soul could die again. Chapter 135
contains a spell to be said when the moon is new
on the first day of the month. The prayer is essentially
for illumination, and has enormous benefits,
as Raymond Faulkner translates:
As for him who knows this spell, he will be a
worthy spirit in the realm of the dead, and he
will not die again in the realm of the dead, and
he will eat in the presence of Osiris. As for him
who knows it on earth, he will be like Thoth, he
will be worshipped by the living, he will not fall
to the power of the king or the hot rage of Bastet,
and he will proceed to a very happy old age.
As this passage suggests, chapters from the
Book of the Dead could be studied by the living to
ensure a fruitful life on earth and equip oneself in
advance for the journey beyond. The Egyptians
imagined this further journey to be much like life
on earth. One was required to eat, rest, and also
work. Therefore, the practice developed of including
clay figurines or other images in the burial
chamber; in the shadow realms, these spirit figures
could be recruited to do hard labor.
Part of the spirit’s progress involved a judgment
at which one had to account for the deeds done in
life. The judgment took place immediately on arrival
in the afterlife, and the outcome determined
whether the soul would progress to the Garden of
Reeds or return to earth. Therefore, many papyri
contain confessions or declarations of activities its
owner has or has not engaged in, which, it is
hoped, will help the judges reach a favorable decision.
The confessions show what behaviors hold
the soul in ignorance, among them lying, quarreling,
blaspheming, or being hot-tempered, quarrelsome,
or deaf to words of truth.
The chapters specify when and sometimes
where incantations should be performed for maximum
effect.Most are in favor of a speedy progress
to the realms of bliss, while some are a safeguard
against tricks or punishments. Some translators
refer to the chapters as spells or magical charms,
which reflects a certain long-held bias that ancient
Egyptian beliefs were primitive, barbaric, confused,
and often corrupt. In reality, the civilization
and learning of ancient Egypt had an enormous
influence on other developing cultures, particularly
those of the Greeks and Romans, and the Tibetans
also have a Book of the Dead. The
philosophical tenets of reincarnation and the perfection
of the soul are also found in the beliefs of
the Taoists, the ancient Celts (see MYTHOLOGY,
CELTIC), the Jewish Kabbalah, the writings of
Zoroaster, the teachings of Buddha, and the Hindu
Vedas of India.
English Versions of the Book of the Dead
The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Edited by
Carol Andrews. Translated by R.O. Faulkner.New
York:Macmillan, 1985.
The Book of the Dead. Translated by E. A. Wallis
Budge.Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 1996.
Works about the Book of the Dead
Karenga,Maulana. The Book of Coming Forth by Day:
the Ethics of the Declarations of Innocence. Los Angeles:
University of Sankore Press, 1990.
Seleem, Ramses. Egyptian Book of the Dead. New
York: Sterling Publishing Co., 2001.