The Egyptian book of the dead

The Book of Dead is the name that the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius gave it to it after publishing the first collection of the texts in 1842, but if you translate the phrase literally, it will be “ Chapters of Coming Forth by Day.”

The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text; at first, it was on the pyramids texts and coffin texts painted onto objects dated back to the 3rd millennium BCE. Then from the beginning of the New Kingdom, it was written on papyrus and placed inside coffins or burial chambers. The text consisted of a number of magic spells written in hieroglyphics, mainly or hieratic script, by many priests over a period of 1000 years.

A lot of what we know about the culture and images from the ancient Egyptian world, we learned from the books of the dead we found. It actually has multiple authors and versions with different variations; you can never find two exact copies of it.

The Book of the Dead was like an ultimate guide to the Afterlife, it depicts the journey of the deceased into the Afterworld. Although every version of the book was different, it was commonly revolving around four main sections:
-The entry of the deceased to the Underworld (Duat) and regaining his physical abilities.
-The dead join God Re and rise with him, as the sun each day.
-The journey across the sky before the judgment in front of the Gods in the Hall of Truth.
-If the deceased passes, it joins the Gods, if it doesn't, it gets destroyed.

During the journey of the deceased in the Underworld, he is required to say specific spells, speak the proper names at the right time for him to pass. For example, the deceased must name various parts of a sentient doorway to pass through it, even the floor and name of his own feet. The Book of the Dead has all the model answers and what the deceased should exactly say in front of the Gods to earn eternal life among them.

The book of the Dead is considered the resource for Egyptologists to understand the religion and concept of the Afterlife for the ancient Egyptians. For example, it has an insight on the concept of the “Ka” and “Ba,” in order for the soul to live on after death, they believed that the Ka, which is the soul, needs to have a physical form to return to and exists again, and that’s when the idea of Mummification came along.

During the New Kingdom, the importance of the Book of the Dead increased; they started to believe that the afterlife was only accessible to those who could afford their own book of the dead. So you will find that it was only buried with the royals and elites.

Actually, they customized the Book of the Dead depending on the person’s life and what kind of spells will he need for him to pass to the afterlife successfully. The book consists of 200 chapters, but no one was found full yet; there is one common spell that almost exists in all the books found, spell 125.

This chapter depicts part of the journey in the Underworld; it shows the judging of the heart of the deceased in the Hall of Truth in front of Osiris and states what exactly should be said and how to act before Osiris and the 42 other judges. Their goal was to cross safely through the Fields of Reeds.