The Book of the Dead

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The Book of the Dead

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Title: The Book of the Dead

Author: E. A. Wallis Budge
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7145] [Yes, we are more than
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THE BOOK OF THE DEAD.
by E. A. Wallis Budge.

CHAPTER I
The Title.
"Book of the Dead" is the title now commonly given to the great
collection of funerary texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes
composed for the benefit of the dead. These consist of spells and
incantations, hymns and litanies, magical formulae and names, words
of power and prayers, and they are found cut or painted on walls of
pyramids and tombs, and painted on coffins and sarcophagi and rolls of
papyri. The title "Book of the Dead" is somewhat unsatisfactory and
misleading, for the texts neither form a connected work nor belong to
one period; they are miscellaneous in character, and tell us nothing

about the lives and works of the dead with whom they were buried.
Moreover, the Egyptians possessed many funerary works that might
rightly be called "Books of the Dead," but none of them bore a name
that could be translated by the title "Book of the Dead." This title was
given to the great collection of funerary texts in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century by the pioneer Egyptologists, who possessed no
exact knowledge of their contents. They were familiar with the rolls of
papyrus inscribed in the hieroglyphic and the hieratic character, for
copies of several had been published, [1] but the texts in them were
short and fragmentary. The publication of the Facsimile [2] of the
Papyrus of Peta-Amen-neb-nest-taui [3] by M. Cadet in 1805 made a
long hieroglyphic text and numerous coloured vignettes available for
study, and the French Egyptologists described it as a copy of the
"Rituel Funéraire" of the ancient Egyptians. Among these was
Champollion le Jeune, but later, on his return from Egypt, he and others
called it "Le Livre des Morts," "The Book of the Dead," "Das
Todtenbuch," etc. These titles are merely translations of the name given
by the Egyptian tomb-robbers to every roll of inscribed papyrus which
they found with mummies, namely, "Kitâb-al-Mayyit," "Book of the
dead man," or "Kitâb al-Mayyitun," "Book of the dead" (plur.). These
men knew nothing of the contents of such a roll, and all they meant to
say was that it was "a dead man's book," and that it was found in his
coffin with him.

CHAPTER II
The Preservation of the Mummified Body in the Tomb by Thoth.
The objects found in the graves of the predynastic Egyptians, i.e.,
vessels of food, flint knives and other weapons, etc., prove that these
early dwellers in the Nile Valley believed in some kind of a future
existence. But as the art of writing was, unknown to them their graves
contain no inscriptions, and we can only infer from texts of the dynastic
period what their ideas about the Other World were. It is clear that they
did not consider it of great importance to preserve the dead body in as

complete and perfect state as possible, for in many of their graves the
heads, hands and feet have been found severed from the trunks and
lying at some distance from them. On the other hand, the dynastic
Egyptians, either as the result of a difference in religious belief, or
under the influence of invaders who had settled in their country,
attached supreme importance to the preservation and integrity of the