A collection of funerary spells, hymns, and instructions written on papyrus to guide the deceased safely through the perils of the underworld to the judgment of Osiris and eternal life. Its most famous scenes include the weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat and the negative confession. Properly titled the Book of Coming Forth by Day, it evolved from earlier pyramid and coffin texts.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Era of CompositionThe corpus of spells developed from the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts and reached its classic form during the New Kingdom, from around the sixteenth century BCE, though individual spells continued to be copied and adapted for well over a thousand years afterward. 2 Origin of the NameThe Egyptian title is the Book of Coming Forth by Day. "Book of the Dead" is Karl Richard Lepsius's coinage of 1842, and it is not a single book: the corpus is a repertoire of spells from which each papyrus takes its own selection. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerVarious priestly authors 1 Scholarship
Critical EditionRaymond Faulkner's translation, prepared directly from the surviving papyri including the Papyrus of Ani, is the standard modern scholarly rendering used across current Egyptology. 2 TransmissionE. A. Wallis Budge's late nineteenth and early twentieth century translations and his own coined title made the collection widely known to English readers, though Egyptologists today regard his renderings as outdated on many points. 3 Sources
Textual NoteNo two surviving papyrus copies contain exactly the same set of spells in the same order, since scribes and buyers each selected and arranged chapters from a larger shared pool to suit an individual burial. 2 Text
Literary Form Transmission
Manuscript TraditionNo two surviving papyrus copies carry the same set of spells in the same order, since scribes and buyers each selected chapters from a larger shared pool for an individual burial; Raymond Faulkner's translation from the surviving papyri, including the Papyrus of Ani, is the standard modern rendering. 2 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteThe Egyptian title, translated as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, names no single fixed text. Ancient scribes selected and arranged spells individually for each burial from a much larger repertoire, so no two surviving papyri are identical in content or order. 2 Learn More
The Book of Coming Forth by Day
The so-called Egyptian Book of the Dead is not a book in any ordinary sense and was not called that by the Egyptians, who knew its spells as the "Book of Coming Forth by Day." It is a loose, variable collection of funerary spells, hymns and vignettes written on papyrus (and earlier on coffins and tomb walls) and placed with the dead to protect and equip them for the perilous journey through the underworld (Duat) to the judgement before Osiris and to eternal life.
No two copies are identical: a scribe or a purchaser selected from a large repertoire of numbered "chapters" (about 190 in the modern numbering), so that each papyrus is a bespoke compilation rather than a fixed canon. The corpus took shape in the New Kingdom (from about 1550 BCE) and remained in use, with changes, for well over a thousand years, developing out of the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts.
The Weighing of the Heart, and Budge's Long Shadow
Its most famous scene is the weighing of the heart: in the hall of judgement the heart of the deceased is set on a balance against the feather of Maat, truth and cosmic order, while Anubis adjusts the scales, Thoth records the verdict, and the monster Ammit waits to devour the heart of anyone who fails, the deceased meanwhile reciting the "negative confession," a declaration of sins not committed. Spell 125, this judgement scene, is the moral heart of the collection. A word on transmission: the English name and the most widely circulated old translation both come from E. A. Wallis Budge, whose Papyrus of Ani (1895) made the text famous but whose renderings and interpretations are now regarded by Egyptologists as outdated and often unreliable; the standard modern English translations, such as Raymond Faulkner's, should be preferred for accuracy.
Karl Richard Lepsius, the German Egyptologist who published the first systematic edition of the corpus in 1842, coined the now-standard title "Book of the Dead," translating an Arabic phrase used by nineteenth-century antiquities dealers for papyri found with mummies rather than the ancient Egyptian title itself, properly the Book of Coming Forth by Day; the corpus is not a single fixed book but a repertoire of several hundred spells from which each owner, or the workshop preparing a papyrus, selected a customised subset. The text's development stretches back through the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts to the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts inscribed in royal tombs, a genre history in which funerary literature reserved for kings became available, over more than a thousand years, to officials and eventually to anyone who could afford a scribe.
In the Texts
Book of the Dead, Spell 125, the Negative Confession, declarations 1-5 (Budge)The Book of the Dead: the Papyrus of Anijudgment of the dead
Ani saith: "Hail, thou whose strides are long, who comest forth from Annu, I have not done iniquity." "Hail, thou who art embraced by flame, who comest forth from Kheraba, I have not robbed with violence." "Hail, Fentiu, who comest forth from Khemennu, I have not stolen." "Hail, Devourer of the Shade, who comest forth from Qernet, I have done no murder; I have done no harm." "Hail, Nehau, who comest forth from Re-stau, I have not defrauded offerings."
The Book of the Dead: the Papyrus of Ani. translated by E. A. Wallis Budge.
About This Passage
Book of the Dead, Spell 125, the Negative Confession, declarations 6-11 (Budge)The Book of the Dead: the Papyrus of Anijudgment of the dead
"Hail, god in the form of two lions, who comest forth from heaven, I have not minished oblations." "Hail, thou whose eyes are of fire, who comest forth from Saut, I have not plundered the god." "Hail, thou Flame, which comest and goest, I have spoken no lies." "Hail, Crusher of bones, who comest forth from Suten-henen, I have not snatched away food." "Hail, thou who shootest forth the Flame, who comest forth from Het-Ptah-ka, I have not caused pain." "Hail, Qerer, who comest forth from Amentet, I have not committed fornication."
The Book of the Dead: the Papyrus of Ani. translated by E. A. Wallis Budge.
About This Passage
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Same As
The same Egyptian funerary compilation is already catalogued among the Esoteric Texts as The Egyptian Book of the Dead; what is described here is the Scriptures & Texts framing, which judges canonicity (recorded here as Non-canonical) within the Egyptian religious context, where the Esoteric Texts entry describes it by its funerary practice and its Ancient Egyptian tradition with no canonicity question at all. It is not the same work as The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), a separate page. Neither entry supersedes the other; see "Where This Collection and the Scripture Listing Disagree."
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005art. Book of Going Forth by DayView the Source 2. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
Raymond O. Faulkner (translator); Carol Andrews (editor), British Museum Press, 1985the standard modern translation of the Book of the DeadView the Source 3. The Egyptian Book of the Dead
E.A. Wallis Budge (trans.), Sold at the British Museum, and by Longmans and Co., B. Quaritch, Asher and Co., Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., and Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, per the book's own 1895 title page, whi, 1895the Papyrus of Ani (Budge), the source of the popular nameView the Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
Richard H. Wilkinson, Thames & Hudson, 2003on Osiris, Maat and the judgement of the deadView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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