Thursday - November 11, 2010

face to face with our darkest imaginings, Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead

Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead,
British Museum, review

A new show at the British Museum brings us face to face with our darkest imaginings, says Richard Dorment.

Most of us learnt about Egyptian burial practices at school – how the mummified corpse was entombed along with food, wine, furniture, bowls and eating utensils to stave off hunger, thirst, and boredom in the afterlife. I have to admit that even as a 12-year-old I found the Egyptian practice of taking everyday objects with them into the hereafter lacking imagination. If you need the same stuff in the next world as you do in this, I reasoned, death must have all the awe and mystery of a camping trip: wherever you might end up, you might as well make yourself comfortable along the way.

Now I know better. As you’ll discover in the British Museum’s autumn blockbuster, packing the celestial rucksack was only the start of the adventure.

For as well as the mummy cases, funerary statuettes, amulets and scarabs found in the pyramids, archaeologists also discovered “pyramid texts” provided for the use of the dead on their journey into the unknown. Written with reed pens on papyrus and often enclosed in wooden containers, or else inscribed on the walls of tombs or painted on the covers of coffins, these writings are known collectively as the Book of the Dead. Whereas the household utensils unearthed in Egyptian tombs are essentially banal, these rich texts draw us deep into the realms of the unconscious, where we come face to face with the ancient world’s darkest, strangest, and most fearful imaginings.

Once mummification was completed and the mummy placed in the sarcophagus, a priest used an adze ritualistically to “open” the dead man’s mouth and enable his winged soul (ba) to enter and leave the mortal remains at will.

Now the real journey could begin.

The Book of the Dead is not a single volume, like the Bible, but a collection of 200 magic spells and incantations which were believed to protect the dead person from evil and to guide him on his passage through a kingdom of the dead. Each spell was intended to be used in a specific situation the dead person might encounter on the tortuous path to eternal bliss.

Just as today you can order a bespoke funeral, so an Egyptian of high status could ask to be buried with his or her own particular selection of spells – say, number 154 (for not letting the body corrupt) and spell 9 (for allowing the soul to leave the tomb and move freely though the afterlife). Other spells enabled the deceased to turn himself into a snake or crocodile at will, or to assume the form of a god.

There’s more HERE , and it’s fascinating. It always is even if I’ve read something before. Seems like reading it again is almost like reading it for the first time.
Even though I’ve read a little about how things were done and what tools were used and the numbers of ppl involved etc, I still have trouble seeing it all because to me, it’s all so massive and beyond my ability to to understand. I’m not putting things well. It’s just that when seeing things on this subject, and not just Egypt and pyramids, the long dead world of the ancients, I’m in awe. Even when I do know I still find myself asking the same question.
How did they do that? 

In keeping with Drew’s unreasonable demand for yet another redhead .....  Here ya go birthday boy. Think you can handle this?

Posted by peiper     on 11/11/2010 at 04:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Archeology / Anthropology •  
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