Pod Insights The Ancients Egypt's Book of the Dead About this episode For over a thousand years, the Book of the Dead guided ancient Egyptians through the afterlife. Filled with powerful spells these remarkable texts were designed to help the dead overcome the dangers of the underworld and reach eternal life in the company of Osiris, God of the Dead.
Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by Yekaterina Barbash to explore the fascinating history of the Book of the Dead. Why was it so important to ancient Egyptian burial beliefs? How were these extraordinary papyri made? And what can one of the finest surviving examples reveal about death, magic and the afterlife in ancient Egypt?
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Hieroglyphs
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Treasures of Tutankhamun
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Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds
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0:00 Tristan Hughes? Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a brand new release every single week, covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:45 Tristan Hughes? The Book of the Dead, a hallmark type of artefact from ancient Egypt, a collection of spells designed to help guide the deceased through the underworld. Sometimes written on papyrus, other times on the mummy wrappings of the dead person themselves, these books were high fashion items in ancient Egypt for centuries. The spells they included and the quality of these books differed from tomb to tomb, from century to century. And yet, many ancient Egyptians considered these guides vital for their burials. Thousands of fragments of ancient books of the dead have been discovered, some better preserved than others.
1:28 Tristan Hughes? And one such book is about to take centre stage in a brand new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in the United States. Beautifully conserved and preserved, the 21-foot papyrus is a complete version, holding nearly all 162 spells known from the longest versions of the Book of the Dead. What's more, it's rich in gleaming vignettes and gilded decoration, a stunning artefact, originally owned by an Egyptian called Ank Meruhr over 2,000 years ago. Today, we'll explore the wider story of ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead, before focusing in on this particularly special artefact with our guest, Dr. Yekaterina Barbash,
2:12 Tristan Hughes? curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum. Welcome to The Ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead.
2:29 Tristan Hughes? Yekaterina, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show.
2:32 Speaker 01 Thank you. It's wonderful to be on the show. I'm really excited about it.
2:36 Tristan Hughes? Me too, and let's get straight into it. In ancient Egypt, what was the Book of the Dead?
2:42 Speaker 01 Well, the Book of the Dead was actually not a book by our modern standards. Rather, the Book of the Dead is a collection of different texts, or that are sometimes called spells. There are about 200 distinct texts. And they're, as a whole, intended to help the spirit of a person transition into the afterlife and then continue successfully existing there. Now, the texts or spells themselves, they address a range of different topics, like protecting the body, providing nourishment, navigating the underworld,
3:26 Speaker 01 which can get quite dangerous and difficult sometimes, joining Osiris, the god of the dead, but also repelling dangerous creatures that appear both in this life and in the underworld.
3:41 Tristan Hughes? So is it almost, this is your spellbook to reach the afterlife, or your guide to the afterlife almost?
3:47 Speaker 01 I suppose you could say that. It is, in many ways, a guide to the afterlife. It's a guide for the spirit to navigate the afterlife, but it's also a guide for the priests and ritualists that prepare the body. And so, for instance, many of the texts included in the Book of the Dead were likely recited during mummification, so they were recited by the living. But it all, they also include, the books of the dead also include texts that we know were used by the living. For instance,
4:27 Speaker 01 protective spells that are meant to protect from scorpions or snake bites. Those were deemed necessary for the afterlife as well.
4:38 Tristan Hughes? I love that. We're going to delve into all of that, the fact that you have animals in the afterlife as well to try and avoid. First things first, when someone says Book of the Dead, the title is so strong, it's so gripping and enticing. I mean, do we know? Where we get the title Book of the Dead from?
4:54 Speaker 01 We do know where we get the title, and it's not from ancient Egypt.
5:00 Tristan Hughes? Ah.
5:00 Speaker 01 Actually, the title was coined by Richard Lepsius, who published one of the longest and most complete books of the dead known to him and known to many Egyptologists, the Book of the Dead of U. F. Ang, which is currently in Turin. And he titled his publication Book of the Dead. The Egyptians themselves sometimes refer to the Book of the Dead as something to the effect of the book or the document of going out daily or going forth daily. And that is a title that occurs on the outside of some scrolls
5:45 Speaker 01 containing Book of the Dead texts. It's also the title of some very specific texts within the Book of the Dead corpus. And that, of course, has to do with the idea of the solar cycle, because the sun, according to Egyptian beliefs, the sun dies every evening, travels through the underworld, hangs out with Osiris there, joins Osiris and becomes reborn, to be born every morning. And that's ultimately what every ancient Egyptian wants is to be reborn and travel with the sun.
6:24 Tristan Hughes? And so how long were books of the dead? How long were they in fashion for in ancient Egypt?
6:31 Speaker 01 So books of the dead were in fashion, I would say, for probably over fifteen hundred years. So they became popular about fifteen hundred B.C. And they were widely used until the first century B.C.
6:50 Tristan Hughes? And so that time period, so fifteen hundred B.C., that's the time of the the New Kingdom, so Tutankhamun, Bronze Age Egypt, the time you think of it at its zenith, all the way down to, well, the time of Cleopatra, after Alexander the Great, when you have the Macedonian Greeks ruling over Egypt. So it's a massive time period.
7:08 Speaker 01 Absolutely massive time period, as as many things are in ancient Egypt.
7:14 Tristan Hughes? And do we see a clear evolution in the design, in the style of these Books of the Dead? So you can easily differentiate, you can tell the difference between a book created in the New Kingdom period to one created, let's say, at the time of Cleopatra VII, the famous Cleopatra.
7:33 Speaker 01 That is a really good question. Because Books of the Dead aren't really like books as we understand them, so they they weren't copied word for word. And almost every document is distinct. They were continuously being developed and added on. And every example depended on probably the fashion of the time, the choice of the owner, and very likely the the preference of the workshop creating the manuscript. So there are two major distinct movements, sort of in the Book of the Dead.
8:12 Speaker 01 The first part until about 700 B.C., so from 1500 to 700 or so. And and then around 700 B.C., Egyptian priests decided to standardize Books of the Dead to a certain extent. Initially, they belonged to a longstanding tradition that actually extends over a thousand years before the first Books of the Dead appeared. But what we modern Egyptologists call Books of the Dead, that corpus of text,
8:51 Speaker 01 first appears just before the New Kingdom, around, I would say, 1600 B.C. And so at that point, the spells in the Book of the Dead are intentionally arranged in groupings that follow an internal logic. And those groupings seem to seem to be connected to the rituals that were performed for the deceased, so during mummification, during the burial, perhaps after the burial. And so as a result, many of the texts appear more than once in slightly different versions.
9:33 Speaker 01 And so by about seven hundred B C, the corpus had become quite confusing and convoluted because it, I guess you can say it adhered to a liturgical format. And there seems to have been a movement among priests around the twenty fifth dynasty. So that that is actually the Kushai dynasty, seven hundred B C or so. And at that point, priests, scribes were really pushing towards systematizing knowledge.
10:10 Speaker 01 So that's when we begin to see systematic compilations of medical information and ritual books. And of course, they looked into the very popular Book of the Dead corpus and came up with a sequence that that arranged all of the spells that addressed the same theme into one batch. And then the next batch would address a different theme. So all of the hard spells were together. And all of the navigating the underworld gate spells and underworld mound spells would be placed together and so on and so forth.
10:53 Speaker 01 And so we ended up with a corpus of texts that often repeat with slight variations, one after the other. And the person ordering a Book of the Dead, or perhaps their family, although they probably did order during life, placed that order during life. They had an option of choosing, I would like two of the hard spells to be included, that only one of the protection from scorpions and crocodiles.
11:27 Tristan Hughes? Well, you've mentioned papyrus a few times. So shall we explore this material? What do we mean by papyrus? And what do we mean by the fact that, you know, these spells, the writing is applied to it?
11:40 Speaker 01 So most commonly, books of the dead were inscribed on papyrus, although they do appear on other materials. So for instance, the earliest books of the dead were written on linen shrouds.
11:55 Tristan Hughes? Ah, okay.
11:56 Speaker 01 But they also, Book of the Dead texts also appear on tomb walls, on stele, so in stone. They rarely appear on leather. And certain specific spells were inscribed on figurines, on amulets, on hypossephaly, which are little round amuletic disks that were placed under the head of the mummified person. In the Ptolemaic period, they started writing Book of the Dead texts on linen mummy bandages that directly wrapped the body.
12:35 Tristan Hughes? But of the more, was papyrus the most important material that you find they used over these centuries?
12:41 Speaker 01 Right. Papyrus was the most common, the most common material used for books.
12:47 Tristan Hughes? And forgive my ignorance, so papyrus, is that made from reed? So it's it's easily acquirable in Egypt?
12:53 Speaker 01 Right. In in ancient times, in antiquity, papyrus was readily available. There's very little papyrus left in Egypt today. But generally, it's a reed that that grew close to the water. And the thick triangular shaped stalks of the reed would be cut and flattened and then glued together with the the papyrus juices, basically in in perpendicular fashion. So most papyri are made out of two layers of flattened papyrus fibre,
13:34 Speaker 01 which is then dried and could be used to inscribe texts, then delete texts, inscribe new texts.
13:42 Tristan Hughes? And, Yekatrina, what are these amulets that seem to be this really fascinating part of the Book of the Dead?
13:49 Speaker 01 There are a series of spells that were meant to be recited. They begin with the title of the spell. Formula for a gold vulture placed at the neck of a transfigured spirit. So again, they're all, they're, they're already saying that this person has become reborn. And an image of a vulture is added in the vignette. And at the end of the recitation, there are directions for the ritualist. It, it explains very specifically words spoken over the gold vulture
14:29 Speaker 01 on which this formula is written and it should be placed on the spirit on the day of burial. So very specific instructions in the papyrus. Interestingly enough, the instructions do not always match what we find in archaeology. Most often, the amulets are not inscribed with that spell. Sometimes they use a totally different material. So instead of gold, they might use stone. They were very flexible about some rules, it seems.
15:07 Tristan Hughes? But in regards to the amulets, you do have archaeological evidence that they did lay those down, that those instructions were followed from the Book of the Dead, from particular spells.
15:16 Speaker 01 Absolutely, absolutely. There are instructions for amulets, there are instructions for, it's kind of a silly name, what we call magic bricks, to be placed at, at the cardinal points of tomb that are described in Books of the Dead and then examples have been found in tombs. So, so they actually do, did follow the directions. But sometimes intentionally or unintentionally.
15:46 Speaker 01 Change them, change the rules.
15:49 Tristan Hughes? When these books of the dead are deposited in the deceased's tomb, do we know how usually they're placed, how they're laid out in the tomb? Is there a particular way that they are deposited?
16:01 Speaker 01 Yes, and no. There is a choice. Sometimes they were placed inside the coffin. Sometimes they were placed on top of the body, either as a scroll in certain periods of time, like in the third intermediate period, they they would, some Book of the Dead papyri were placed unrolled on top of the body. Scrolls could also be placed outside of the coffin and within containers that are sometimes shaped as a the Tass of Car Osiris statues.
16:36 Tristan Hughes? What are they, Yekterina?
16:38 Speaker 01 So it's a combination of three gods. The the Egyptian religion is broad and complicated and what I like to call morphy, because gods morph one into another and join together. And so the god Ta, a creator god, the god Sokar, a primordial god of rebirth, and Osiris, the god of the underworld, who, according to Egyptian beliefs, was really the first entity to die, be mummified, and become reborn into the afterlife.
17:23 Speaker 01 They join together into this wonderful deity that sometimes, whose images sometimes contained Book of the Dead scrolls.
17:32 Tristan Hughes? And is it also correct that some books of the dead, if you look at the parchment, that some of them, or or the papyrus or whatever material they're written on? Some of them could be much more decorated than others.
17:48 Speaker 01 Yes, absolutely. And again, depending on the fashion of the time, the location, where the papyrus was made, and also how much funds a person could spend.
18:01 Tristan Hughes? Much money, yes.
18:03 Speaker 01 They sometimes contain only texts and sometimes were brightly decorated with brightly colored vignettes. And in a very few cases, they also have gilding.
18:17 Tristan Hughes? Well, that leads us nicely into this particular example that we're going to focus in on, one that I know you've done a lot of work around, Yekaterina, and the team at the Brooklyn Museum, which is your extraordinary Book of the Dead now on display. First of all, how does this Book of the Dead end up in Brooklyn?
18:36 Speaker 01 Great question. So, the Book of the Dead of Ankmer Ware was first acquired in Egypt by actually a British physician named Henry Abbott. He lived in Cairo and worked as a doctor and collected close to 2,000 Egyptian antiquities. He had a really good eye and was apparently friends with a lot of Egyptologists. He doesn't seem to have studied or been a scholar, so to speak, but he amassed a large collection. And in 1853, he decided to sell his collection off.
19:20 Speaker 01 And he came to New York and opened, I believe it was the first exhibition of ancient Egyptian art in the US, which was wildly popular. Walt Whitman signed the guest book 20 times. He loved it and became friends with Henry Abbott.
19:41 Speaker 01 Nevertheless, the collection didn't sell and it ended up being acquired for the New York Historical Society. And so the Book of the Dead of Ankhmer Ware came to the New York Historical Society. Until in nineteen thirty seven, the New York Historical Society decided to focus on the history of New York. And first lent and then sold the entire collection to the Brooklyn Museum. So the gilded scroll was at the Brooklyn Museum, has been at the Brooklyn Museum since nineteen thirty seven.
20:21 Speaker 01 But here's the problem, somebody, likely Dr. Henry Abbott himself, or someone working for him, wanted to make sure that the scroll survived. And so he first cut it into fragments and then glued it to a paper backing. And that certainly helped it stay intact. And then he's rolled it back up into a scroll. So the papyrus arrived to Brooklyn as a scroll. And when I started working here eighteen years ago, I saw a scroll with about six inches, with a bit of gilding sticking out, and that's all I knew about it.
21:05 Speaker 01 Till a few years ago, when we applied for a grant, received the grant from the Bank of America to conserve it.
21:14 Tristan Hughes? Yes, talk to us about this amazing conservation project that you and the team did to, frankly, unveil the secrets, unveil the writing, reveal the writing on this Book of the Dead.
21:26 Speaker 01 Oh, it was glorious. It was glorious. Because I had only seen about six inches of the scroll, I really did not have a good sense of how large it is, what it contained. And so the first unrolling had to be done on the floor because the scroll was twenty one feet long. And I swear I fell to my knees and crawled around it for hours. It turned out that the Book of the Dead was complete. There was a beginning and then end. And that was the first time in probably over two thousand years that I was able to
22:07 Speaker 01 read the name of the owner and his mother. Well, let me rephrase that. I haven't been around for two thousand years. It's the first time in two thousand years that anyone read the name of the owner.
22:23 Tristan Hughes? It's really interesting, kind of that that revealing process, as you mentioned, Yekaterina, like the fact that you've realized that there are no missing pieces that you have here, a complete copy of the Book of the Dead, that you're seeing the name of the person who it was for. You know, you're one of the first people to see his name in over two thousand years. And the writing itself, should we be thinking, is it just hieroglyphs? Or is it in ancient Greek or Demotic? Isn't it? What language should we be thinking of? What script?
22:55 Speaker 01 It's written in the ancient Egyptian language, the Middle Egyptian specifically. But the script they used for this Book of the Dead, for for the Book of the Dead of Ankhmer Ware, is hieratic, which is basically a cursive form of hieroglyphs. And the hieratic script appeared at the same time as the hieroglyphic script. It's sort of like, if you think of capital letters versus handwritten.
23:27 Tristan Hughes? Right. Okay. So basically, a cursive version of hieroglyphs, which is amazing. And the fact that you have like the first lines and the last lines, I must also ask, because you mentioned this earlier, how some books of the dead have almost the equivalent of a title page, or have some writing on the other side. Did it have any writing at all at the other side, or was the title for this book?
23:48 Speaker 01 There is no writing on the other side. There may have been at some point, but it's earlier today, I spoke about the the two layers of papyrus. So with the manuscript of Ankhmer Ware, only the top layer remains. It's that thin. And to be honest, I'm not sure if there ever was another layer on the back, and it had fallen off. Perhaps Henry Abbott helped it. Perhaps he didn't. But we don't know what was on the back. I would not expect anything to be written on the back for this time period.
24:29 Tristan Hughes? Fair enough. Well, this figure of Ankhmer, do we have any idea who he was?
24:35 Speaker 01 So what we know is that he lived around the second century B.C. during Ptolemaic times. He lived probably in northern Egypt. I know that because the the style of decoration of this papyrus and the layout was more common in the Mampite area, just basically around modern Cairo. We also know that his mother was named Taneferher, which means she of the beautiful face. And we know that he was really well off. But unfortunately, some books of the dead mention the titles of the owner. So what he did during life, where
25:19 Speaker 01 he worked, there are no titles in this papyrus.
25:23 Tristan Hughes? And who did he have to write this book, this twenty one foot long scroll for him?
25:31 Speaker 01 So he likely, I would imagine that it was a workshop of scribes. Actually, I'm sure it was a scribal workshop. These scribes were likely also very much involved in in the religion. So I would refer to them as priest scribes, perhaps. There's at least four different hands that that can be identified in the papyrus. And we still don't know exactly how it worked, whether it was a new scribe every day, or I don't know, Khunumhotep wanted to have lunch and Amenememet took over. But there are at least four different hands.
26:23 Speaker 02 If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy and important thing that's ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost, and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out, Dan Snow's History Hit, for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts.
27:04 Tristan Hughes? Hi there. Just before we return to the show, I wanted to pop in here to tell you about the History Hit subscription and give you a taste of the exclusive content that subscribers get. Now, as a History Hit subscriber, you have access to hundreds of brand new documentaries with a new release every week, from Dan Snow exploring Maya ruins in Belize, to my documentary on Petra and the Nabateans in Jordan. There's an app where you can search for any time period, for any culture, or presenter. There is something for everyone. You also get, as part of the subscription, early access to all of our podcasts with no ads. And on the Ancients, we do really value our listeners, so we also release an exclusive subscriber-only
27:48 Tristan Hughes? episode every two weeks. Here's a taster of one of our most recent episodes, when Joseph, our producer, put the important listener questions to me. Right, next question. Is Ramses the Great overrated? Oh, interesting. I can see why people would think that, because his name's on absolutely everything, right? But, I don't know, having visited somewhere like Abu Simbel and gazed upon those incredible colossal statues of Ramses II, obviously, we're talking about him today, and he would be very, very happy in how he's been shown today. But, you did rule for 66 years. It's a period in Egyptian history, you know, that maybe is not the kind of the zenith.
28:30 Tristan Hughes? Of maybe a century or so earlier, but Egypt is still powerful. I think the clincher for me to probably say, actually, no, I don't think so, is the fact that although, yes, his dynasty comes crashing down not long after his death. If you look at, for instance, the buildings he does, not just Abu Simbel on the south, but let's say his great forts in the west. It does seem that actually he does prepare Egypt to an extent. You know, to repel what will happen after his death, which is the invasion of the sea peoples. So I think he does deserve credit for that. Maybe his personal promotion puts him up to 11. However, I don't want to go so far as to, to, to kind of say that then actually he wasn't a significant or very
29:15 Tristan Hughes? interesting and remarkable pharaoh.
29:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, I am going to have to disagree with you.
29:21 Tristan Hughes? Okay.
29:21 Speaker 03 I think he is absolutely, definitely overrated. Basically, he mounts this big propaganda campaign around the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 B.C. And he says, oh, it's this wonderful big victory. He plasters reliefs of it, of him on this battlefield, on loads of different temples all around Egypt. He, he screams about it. He's a propaganda genius. It turns out he didn't actually win that battle. It was against the Hittites and it was a stalemate.
29:53 Tristan Hughes? Now, to find out who wins that argument and to listen to the rest of the episode, sign up to History Hit. There's subscriber episodes every fortnight and access to hundreds of original documentaries. That's historyhit.com/subscribe or click the link in the show notes. Now, back to the show.
30:20 Tristan Hughes? Do you think that was probably the standard practice that, yeah, you know, a series of scribes would write different parts? You know, different, they'd write out different spells in a book of the dead. That's what you'd expect. So. You wouldn't expect the exact same scribal hand for every single spell in the book.
30:37 Speaker 01 Interestingly enough, sometimes the handwriting changes in the middle of the spell.
30:42 Tristan Hughes? Ah, okay.
30:43 Speaker 01 That does occur pretty frequently with other papyri, although some texts were fully inscribed by the same person.
30:52 Tristan Hughes? And so what types of spells, though, do you get early on in the scroll, like Yakaterina?
30:58 Speaker 01 So there are texts that have to do with embalming, because mummification for the Egyptians created a deity. So you you took a body with their spirit that could ideally travel back and forth between the worlds and made it into a divinity, and that helps the spirit achieve that transfigured status. Or basically the status where they are accepted among the other gods. One of my favorite versions of spell one twenty five has the god Anubis, who's a jackal or dog-headed god.
31:42 Speaker 01 He comes and brings the the deceased into the court of Osiris. And he addresses the the court, there's Osiris and forty two of his divine judges and and a few other gods. And Anubis says basically, hi, everyone, this is the deceased so and so. I I know he's one of you because he smells like you. It's just like what a a dog would think, presumably, yeah.
32:13 Tristan Hughes? And is that, you say, spell one hundred and twenty five, that Yakaterina, or?
32:17 Speaker 01 Right, that's one of the versions of one twenty five.
32:21 Tristan Hughes? So the earlier spells are around the funeral, around the mummification and stuff like that. And is it famous, things like the opening of the mouth?
32:29 Speaker 01 Right, there are spells that are connected to the opening of the mouth. But interestingly enough, the opening of the mouth ritual is somewhat of a separate thing.
32:42 Speaker 01 It's not actually included in the Book of the Dead. They're images representing the opening of the mouth in the vignettes. And then the spells that we number as spells twenty one to twenty three have to do with the opening of the mouth. They're they they they're meant to basically give the deceased power over their mouths to receive food and drink, to speak, and, you know, to to be able to pronounce their own name and all of the important information that's mentioned in the later texts.
33:24 Tristan Hughes? And go back to the one you described earlier as well with Anubis saying he smells like, or they smell like one of them.
33:32 Tristan Hughes? Is it going too far to say, does that? Is that spell giving a bit more characterization, a bit more of a story? In that particular entry, it it's quite an odd line to include to say that they're smelling the person and that he knows that he or she is one of the deceased then. I can remember where he is one of the deceased.
33:52 Speaker 01 The Egyptian gods, I think, you know, it's at first glance, they seem like quite oddly looking, animal headed, human bodied entities. But the animal heads are are not actually representations of what the Egyptians thought the gods looked like. They represent the qualities of of that deity. So Anubis, the jack, the canine, right? He's very protective. He is, he can find the correct way and lead. And he has a very keen sense of smell.
34:34 Speaker 01 And he is responsible for embalming and mummification because, you know, as the dead were embalmed and buried, usually in the west, next to the desert, that that's where the wild dogs and jackals hung around. So they were seen as sort of protecting the deceased and being part of that whole process.
34:57 Tristan Hughes? If we focus on a couple of other, I guess, well-known spells today, if someone says the Book of the Dead. Yeah, Katrina, I think the one that that instantly comes to mind for many, or if they know anything about this, would be the weighing of the heart. Now, what is this?
35:13 Speaker 01 Definitely, that is the most best-known spell and probably the most recognizable vignette from the Book of the Dead. And it was very common in Book of the Dead manuscripts, but also it appears on coffins, cartonage and so on. So the weighing of the heart scene is usually attached, actually, to spell 125 that I already mentioned.
35:41 Tristan Hughes? Ah, this is 125. Okay, let's do it.
35:44 Speaker 01 And so this is one of the ultimate goals of the deceased's journey through the underworld is to get to Osiris's court. And Osiris is pictured sitting on his throne. Ankmerer had had him gilded beautifully. And there are forty-two judges in the court. They're usually pictured as as mamiform, so their bodies look like those of bound, embalmed bodies. And they have a variety of animal and human heads.
36:26 Speaker 01 And there's usually a large scale on which the heart of the deceased, which was the really, the seat of one's consciousness. The Egyptians believed that the brain is only there to produce mucus, a quite unnecessary organ. But the heart is where your thoughts and your consciousness resided. And so the heart was typically mummified separately and ideally placed back into the body. So on one side, you would have the heart, the consciousness of the deceased. On the other side, you would have an Image of the goddess Maad.
37:09 Speaker 01 And that is personification of truth and balance and harmony and her. Etymologically, her name has to do with navigating a boat correctly. So you you need to be on the right path, sort of Buddhist like. And so in a perfect situation, your heart, your consciousness would be in balance with Maad. With that personification of truth and the right path. It shouldn't be heavier, it shouldn't really be lighter.
37:49 Speaker 01 Now, the deceased themselves would be present during the swaying of the heart. Thoth, the god of wisdom and knowledge and writing. Usually Ibis-headed deity and he's standing next to the weighing of the heart and and recording what's going on. And a terrible creature named the Amun, or perhaps the meaning of the devourer. Is a combination of a crocodile, lion and hippo. And if your heart is not in balance, Amun would devour your heart. Which would mean a second death.
38:32 Speaker 01 The worst scenario possible for an ancient Egyptian. But of course, we never see that happen in Books of the Dead because it's all about wishful thinking and everything turns out well.
38:45 Tristan Hughes? Because i- in that particular spell, does it give advice as to how to make sure that that doesn't happen, that the the heart isn't thrown away to this monster?
38:55 Speaker 01 Yes, it's so in that particular spell, in in spell one twenty five. The deceased is recorded as saying a declaration of innocence or sometimes called the negative confession. Because they list what transgressions they have not done. Like, I have not caused hunger, I haven't caused tears, I haven't killed, I haven't ordered a killing. I haven't caused pain, I haven't added to the pad of the scales. I haven't taken milk from babies and so on and so forth. And then they addressed the gods, they addressed each of the forty two judges
39:39 Speaker 01 and proclaimed their innocence, their, their sort of correct and balanced life. But that's not the only spell that, that helps the outcome of the weighing of the heart. Because there is, there are several so-called heart spells, spell thirty, for instance, that were usually inscribed both on papyri and on large, dark green, scarab-shaped amulets. And these amulets would be placed on the chest where the mummified heart was ideally. And I really like those spells because they, they address the heart.
40:24 Speaker 01 And the, the, the spell says something to the effect of, oh, my heart, oh, the heart that my mother gave me, please don't stand witness against me in the court of Osiris. Don't say anything, don't say against me, he did do it. Do not create things against me before the great god. And it's just such a wonderful illustration of how a person's consciousness is sort of separated from the person themselves, right? And they, basically asking the consciousness to keep quiet.
41:05 Tristan Hughes? I love that as well, yeah. Keep your, keep your thoughts in check so that you get past the weighing of the heart.
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42:12 Tristan Hughes? Yeah, Katrina, obviously, there are so many spells and we can't cover them all. I would like to ask you, though, are there any particular ones that, you know, you can see in your particular copy, the Gilders copy, or others that are, that you find particularly fascinating, that, that shine a light on one particular part of this journey, of this idea of what happened in the afterlife?
42:34 Speaker 01 It's so difficult to choose. I do love the gate spells.
42:38 Tristan Hughes? What are the gate spells?
42:39 Speaker 01 So the gate spells are, for instance, there could be up to 21 gates of the underworld. And the, so the spirit is intended to pass through all of these gates, but it's not just a question of navigating the, the geography, the topography, because each gate has a guardian. And Books of the Dead, the Book of the Dead of Ankhmer, where, as usual, depicts every gate and its guardian, and then the text explains that as you come up to each gate,
43:19 Speaker 01 you should say, I know you, I know your name, I know the name of the god guarding you. And then the names of each gate and the guardian are listed. And that is the only way to pass. And I, I, I'm particularly partial to the gate spells because it reveals so much about the value of knowledge and the value of being able to, I think it's quite deep thought, the, the value of being able to name an object or a person, in a way, gives you power over them.
43:58 Tristan Hughes? And, and the names of the people at the gates, are they certain demigods or deities? Or are they everyday Egyptian names?
44:06 Speaker 01 No, they, they are, they are definitely.
44:12 Speaker 01 Divinities, deities, I suppose you can call them demons in the sense of like a minor deity.
44:20 Tristan Hughes? Right.
44:21 Speaker 01 Yeah. For in- for instance, one combination of hippo and lion guardian is named the one with his mouth wide open.
44:32 Tristan Hughes? So you can imagine that the front end is the hippo then with the big mouth and that's what they are.
44:36 Speaker 01 Precisely.
44:37 Tristan Hughes? Right, so okay, so these gatekeepers are also kind of animalistic as well, which harkens back to what you were saying earlier about how they had to get past all these various different strange animals in the, you know, on their journey to the weighing of the heart. So Yekaterina, if you have spells associated with the burial, spells associated with the gates, the weighing of the heart as well. But you mentioned how with the standardization of them, that they are kind of grouped together into certain groups.
45:05 Speaker 01 Right.
45:05 Tristan Hughes? Are there any other particular groups of spells that we should highlight?
45:09 Speaker 01 Well, probably protection of the body. So the body, the mummified body is a vessel to which the person's baspirit can come back when they're on earth a- as the baspirit could travel between the worlds. And so protection of the body was very important in terms of keeping the body intact. And I suppose those spells do have to do with embalming, but also protecting from crocodiles and scorpions and snakes. And their wonderful little scenes in the Papyrus of Akhmer where
45:47 Speaker 01 next to those spells that represent a person spearing a crocodile or spearing an enormous bug. There are also texts that that place the deceased into the community of other deities. And I suppose one important type of text that we haven't touched on at all are the the sun hymns. So they usually appear e- early on in that Seid recension. And the later sequence when everything is systematized. And they they bring that solar aspect, the the solar cycle.
46:33 Speaker 01 Into the Book of the Dead because it's so important to the Egyptian conception of of the afterlife and rebirth. Actually, I don't really like the word rebirth because it presumes being reborn into the same place you were. But that's not what's going on in ancient Egypt. You you became transfigured into a different realm.
47:00 Tristan Hughes? So Yekaterina, the end of the Book of the Dead, for instance, the one you got at the Brooklyn Museum of Ankhmer, where. Is it congratulations, you've got through the Book of the Dead, you've you've transitioned, you know, you're you're. You've succeeded in navigating these challenges, you've fended off the animals, you've weighed, your heart has been weighed successfully. You've made it to the end. Well done. Is there anything like that at the end of the Book of the Dead?
47:26 Speaker 01 Not really. I I would say that in the whole document, the document as a whole. Was that congratulations. We're assuming that you've made it. It's now written in the document and the entire process is documented. And because the the Egyptians believed that sort of text, recitation, but also writing of text. Has some power, has a sort of magical way of making things come true. The mere existence of a Book of the Dead is yet another failsafe. If if someone forgot to read the ritual, you would have it in writing.
48:11 Speaker 01 And it could perpetually repeat that transfiguration of your spirit.
48:18 Tristan Hughes? A failsafe. So the Book of the Dead can also be a failsafe to make sure, ah, okay, that's clever, so that they have it with them. It's a symbol of status at the same time.
48:27 Speaker 01 Absolutely, absolutely. And gilding just takes that status to the extreme.
48:34 Tristan Hughes? Yeah, Katuna, this has been fascinating. My last question is, what happens to the Books of the Dead? Why do they ultimately fall out of fashion? Do we have any idea?
48:42 Speaker 01 We have some ideas. So Books of the Dead come from a long tradition of funerary or mortuary beliefs. And they go back to a thousand years to the pyramid texts, when the same sort of beliefs were written inside pyramids. There were an oral tradition before then, and by the time Books of the Dead were beginning to fall out of fashion, they simply morphed into another tradition. So in the late Ptolemaic and Roman period, the so-called Books of Breathing become more and more popular.
49:24 Speaker 01 And they follow the same beliefs, and some of them actually integrate some of the Book of the Dead texts. But it's, I suppose, it's a question of fashion.
49:36 Tristan Hughes? It's a question of fashion. There you go. Yeah, Katuna, this has been really interesting. Great to finally explore the Book of the Dead and what it actually is. And to focus on an example that people can come and see today at the Brooklyn Museum. Tell us about this exhibition that's going on.
49:54 Speaker 01 Well, it's very exciting to have the Gilded Book of the Dead out on view. Not only is this seven-meter, twenty-one-foot-long papyrus complete, it has a beginning and an end with blank sheets of papyrus on either side. And all of the texts that should be there are there, I checked, I promise. But it has gilding on it, which is incredibly rare. There are about ten known gilded papyri surviving from ancient Egypt, and most of them are really tiny fragments. About three are close to being complete.
50:39 Speaker 01 So it's a really, really special treat to be able to witness a gilded papyrus in person. This one was the first papyrus with gilding on it that I have seen in my entire career, over twenty years in Egyptology. So it's really special.
50:58 Tristan Hughes? Yekaterina, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for coming on the show.
51:03 Speaker 01 It's been such a pleasure. Thank you.
51:10 Tristan Hughes? Well, there you go. There was the Brooklyn Museum's curator, Dr. Yekaterina Barbash, talking you through the story of ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead and their brand-new exhibition. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you want more episodes on ancient Egypt, well, you are in luck. We have recorded several episodes on ancient Egypt over the years. Two we're going to put in the show notes for you to just click on straight away after this episode, if you so wish to. We'll have one, which we recorded early last year, all about hieroglyphs with Hugo Cook, and another one that we recorded live at Chalk Valley History Festival a few years ago now, with Professor Toby Wilkinson, about several key artefacts that were discovered in Tutankhamun's tomb alongside the boy pharaoh.
51:56 Tristan Hughes? That episode is called Treasures of Tutankhamun. We'll put links to both of those episodes in the show notes. Now, if you've been enjoying the ancients recently, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe. That is all from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
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