The Book of The Dead in the Second Dynasty

Running from the region of native Egyptian tradition, we touch finn ground with the prove derived from the memorials of the 2nd dynasty. A bas-relief continued at Aix in Provence remarks Aasen and Ankef, two of the priests of Sent or Senta, the fifth king of the 2nd dynasty, about B.C. 4000, and a stele at Oxford and other in the Egyptian Museum at Giza record the name of a third priest, Shera or Sheri, a "royal relative" On the stella at Oxford we have represented the broken and his wife seated, one on each side of an altar, which is addressed with funeral offerings of pious relatives; above, in right lines of hieroglyphics in relief, are the names of the objects offered, and below is an inscription which reads, "thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of vessels of ale, thousands of linen gannents, thousands of shifts of wearing clothes, and thousands of oxen." Now from this monument i is noted that already in the 2nd dynasty a priesthood gone in Egypt which numbered among its members congeneric of the royal family, and that a spiritual system which established as a duty the admitting of meat and drink offerings for the dead was also in engaged operation. The offering of specific objects goes far to prove the existence of a ritual or service wherein their import would be indicated; the conjunction of these words and the prayer for "thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of vessels of ale," etc., with the predict, "Anpu-khent-Amenta shall give thee thy thousands of loaves of bread, thy thousands of vessels of ale, thy thousands of vessels of balms, thy thousands of changes of clothes, thy thousands of oxen, and thy thousands of bullocks, enables us to recognise that ritual in the text inscribed upon the pyramid of Teta in the Vth dynasty, fron which the above promise is taken. Thus the traditional demonstrate of the text on the coffin of Menthu-hetep and the view on the memorial of Shera support one another, and in concert they prove beyond a question that a fonn of the Book of the Dead was in use leastways in the period of the earliest dynasties, and that rank ceremonies related there with were duly perfonned.
 
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The Book of The Dead in the First Dynasty

The oldest form or edition of the Book of the Dead as we have got it supplies no information some as to the period when it was compiled, but a copy of the conventional text inscribed upon a coffin oi Menthu-hetep, a queen of the 11th dynasty,about B.C. 2500, made by the late Sir J. G. Wilkinson, informs us that the chapter which, reported to the arrangement of Lepsius, bears the number LXIV.,  was broken in the reign of Hesep-ti,the 5th king of the 1st dynasty, about B.C. 4266. On this coffin are two re-create of the chapter, the one instantly following the other. In the rubric to the first the name of the king during whose reign the chapter is said to have been "found" is given as Menthu-hetep, which, as Goodwin first pointed out,is a mistake for Men-kau-Ra, the fourth king of the 4th dynasty, about B.C. 3633, but in the rubric to the second the kings name is given as Hesep-ti. Thus it comes out that in the period of the 11th dynasty it was considered that the chapter might instead be as old as the time of the 1st dynasty. Further, it is given to Hesep-ti in papyri of the 21st dynasty, a period when certain attention was paid to the history of the Book of the Dead; and it thus comes out that the Egyptians of the Middle Empire considered the chapter to date from the more such.

The gloss on the coffin of Queen Menthu-hetep, which imputes the chapter to Hesep-ti, states that "this chapter was found in the foundations beneath the lzennu boat by the foreman of the builders in the time o the king of the North and South, Hesep-ti, triumphant", the Nebseni papyrus says that this chapter wa; discovered in the city of Khemennu (Hermopolis) on a block of ironstone  written in letters of lapis-lazuli, deep the feet of the god"; and the Turin papyrus (26th dynasty or later) adds that the name of the viewfinder was Heru-ta-ta-f, the son of Khufu or Cheops, the second king of the IVth dynasty, about B.C. 3733, who was at the time making a tour of inspection of the temples. Birch and Naville view the chapter one of the oldest in the Book of the Dead; the fonner basing his view on the rubric and the latter upon the prove derived from the messages and character of the text, but Maspero, while taking the great age of the chapter, does not attach any very great importance to the rubric as fixing any take date for its composition. Of Herutataf the finder of the block of stone, we know from later texts that he was taken to be a leamed man, and that his language was only with difficultness to be understood, and we also know the prominent part which he took as a recognized man of letters in bringing back the court of his father Khufu the sage Tetteta. It is then not improbable that Herutatafs character for learning may have advised the connection of his name with the chapter, and perchance as its literary reviser, at all cases as early as the period of the Middle Empire tradition related him with it.


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What is the Book of the Dead?
The History of the Book of The Dead

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The History of the Book of The Dead

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What is the Book of the Dead?

A rough collection of magical spells and conjurations that were normally written on papyrus, sometimes  instanced,  and  popular in Egypt from the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.E.), the master copies were on the walls of the Tonbs in Saqqara. Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 B.C.E.) coffins also taken early versions.

"Book of the Dead" is the title now commonly given to the great accumulation of funerary texts which the ancient Egyptian scribes calm for the do good of the dead. These consist of spells and incantations, hymns and litanies, magical formulae and names, words of power and prayers, and they are determined cut or painted on walls of pyramids and tombs, and black on coffins and sarcophagi and rolls of papyri. The title "Book of the Dead" is pretty unsatisfactory and shoddy, for the texts neither form a related work nor belong to one period; they are various in character, and tell us nothing about the goes and works of the dead with whom they were forgot. Moreover, the Egyptians held many funerary works that might justifiedly be called "Books of the Dead," but none of them bore a name that could be read by the title "Book of the Dead." This title was given to the great collecting 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 engraved in the hieroglyphic and the hieratic character, for copies of different had been published,1 but the texts in them were short and fragmentary. The publication of the Facsimile2 of the Papyrus of Peta-Amen-neb-nest-taui3 by M. Cadet in 1805 made a long hieroglyph text and legion coloured vignettes open for study, and the French Egyptologists represented it as a copy of the "Rituel Funraire" of the ancient Egyptians. Among these was Champollion le Jeune, but later, on his issue from Egypt, he and others visited it "Le Livre des Morts," "The Book of the Dead," "Das Todtenbuch," etc. These titles are merely versions of the name given by the Egyptian tomb-robbers to all roll of engraved papyrus which they found with mummies, to wit, "Kitb-al-Mayyit," "Book of the dead man," or "Kitb al-Mayyitun," "Book of the dead" (plur.). These men knew nothing of the subjects 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.
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The Funeral Procession in Ancient Egypt


After the embalming was finished, the family was notified that it was time to forget its home on the east bank and travel by gravy holder to the west bank for the funeral. The survivors formed a procession that also included priests and master sorrower to journey to the tomb. Servants carried flowers, oblations, food and drink, sacred ritual oils, and all the objects intended for burial. Some of the most important of these were a large box checking the canopic jars and a chest containing statuettes addressed shabtis.

Egyptian Wooded Coffin
A priest performed the Opening of the Mouth ceremonial on the mummy at the entree of the tomb. This ritual gave the gone the ability to speak, eat, and have full use of his or her body. After the mummy was put in a coffin and then in a sarcophagus, it was settled in the burial chamber. Enclosed in the tomb were all the funerary figurines, headrests, modeling of daily life, furniture, jars, cosmetics, and games necessary to ensure the deceased's enjoyment of the afterlife.

Afterward the door was certain, a banquet was held last of the tomb entrance. When clean the mummification equipment was buried near the tomb, the funeral was over.

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 Preparing for Afterlife
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The Burial Rites in Ancient Egypt

Anubis was the ancient Egyptian god
associated with mummification and
burial rituals; here, he attends
to a mummy
When a person died, the whole family went into mourning. Women howled, direct clothing was worn, and men stopped shaving and eating. When a pharaoh died, the total country mourned, and although the ancient Egyptians masculine cleanliness, all shaving and bathing quit.

The clay was taken by boat from the east bank of the Nile, where most people gone, to the west bank. Burial Sites were situated in the western low desert because the west was associated with the setting sun and death. First the body was set in a refining tent where it was cleansed and dressed in clean clothes. Next it was brought back the embalming tent where it was canned. The embalming priests wore masks corresponding Anubis, the god of embalming, and narrated prayers and spells.

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Deities and Ancient Egyptians
Creation Beliefs in Ancient Egypt
View of the World in Ancient Egypt
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Preparing for Afterlife

Through the more than three thousand years of ancient Egypt's history, established beliefs about the transition to eternal life persisted, with new ideas being united from time to time. Most important for full engagement in the afterlife was the demand for an individual's identity element to be preserved. Accordingly, the body had to remain full, and the person had to get regular oblations of food and drink.

The afterlife was assured by: 

(1) saving the body through mummification.

(2) restrictive the body in a tomb and entering a person's name on the tomb walls, funerary stele, and burial equipment.

(3) Rendering food and drink or illustrating food blocks and writing about food offerings in tombs in case proper relatives or priests were not open to make food offerings. These paintings and funerary inscriptions, which left the owner of the tomb with "a thousand bread, a thousand cattle," were thought capable of getting the individual. The Egyptians also allowed their tombs with many kinds of equipment, admitting furniture, utensils, clothing, jewelry, and cosmetics, according to their wealth, to see their material comfort in the best viable afterlife.

To learn divine auspices, funerary texts were written at first unique on the ramparts of pharaohs' tombs and later on paper rush left in the tombs of individual people. These texts took such writings as adaptations of the myth about the death of Osiris and charms to protect the deceased on his or her serious journey to the underworld.

The Egyptians believed that a person's spirit or soul was composed of three distinct parts, the ka (its vital force or "spiritual twin"), the ba (its personality or spirit), and the akh. The ka was created at a person's birth and involved a body to remain to live after an individual's death. It could also live in a statue of the gone. The ba was a person's spirit, represented most commonly by a human-headed bird, which was issued at the time of death. It could leave the tomb during the day hours to travel about the earth and was also with the broken at his or her opinion. The akh was the "immortality" of an individual and occupied in the heavens.

The final step in the transition to the afterlife was the opinion by Osiris, god of the Scheol, in a ritual known as the Weighing of the Heart. If a person had led a comfortable life, he or she would be estimated worthy of eternal life. Many spells and rituals were designed to ensure a prosperous judgment and were written in the papyrus or linen the Egyptian "Book of the Dead".

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View of the World (How the Ancient Egyptians Saw the World)

The ancient Egyptians reckoned the world to be a far several place from what we now know it to be. They conceived the earth was a flat platter of clay heavy on a vast sea of water from which the Nile River sprang. In this fundamental description of the world, the effects of nature were identified as divine descendants of the creator god. The god Hapi, for example, presented the Nile River. The Nile Valley's safe and foreseeable natural cycles assisted in the evolution of the Egyptian civilization. The river's annual inundation of its floodplain brought fertility to the land through water and silt; the region's perpetual sun promoted bountiful harvesting; and the dryness of the climate provided ideal checks for the safe storage of surplus crops. Because the very structure of the ancient Egyptians' civilization turned on the extended predictability of their environment, they looked to their deities to perpetuate the status quo.

Of full the deities of ancient Egypt, the goddess Maat was the most serious in perpetuating the status quo. The Egyptians considered that when the gods wrought the land of Egypt out of topsy-turvydom, Maat was created to embody truth and justness, and the basic orderly agreement of the world. Maat wast the down state of the god-created world, and whole that people had to do in order to live and fly high in the world was to honor and preserve Maat. On a national level, it was the king's province to keep Maat through daily oblations given at the temples. On an individual level, the goal of every Egyptian was to lead an right life that would allow charm into the afterlife after death.

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Creation Beliefs in Ancient Egypt

The sun rises over the
circular mound of
creation as goddesses
pour out the primeval
waters around it
Ancient Egyptian ideas about the creation of the world offer peculiarly valuable insights into the way these orderly, agricultural people saw themselves and their land. Several versions of the creation myth exist, and each evokes images of the Nile River's flood cycle and the increase of bountiful crops on the silt left behind by losing floodwaters.  According to one widely given creation myth, eight deities lay in among the darkness and disarray of a great watery void ahead the world existed.




God Nun, the embodiment of
the primordial waters,
lifts the barque of Ra
into the sky at the
moment of creation
The god Nun personated the water, and the creation of the world began when an earthen mound arose from him. Amun or in one version Ra, the sun god, rose from this mound. In otherwise version of creation, a lotus broken from the waters of Nun, and Amun appeared from within the lotus. Amun, from within himself, brought forth the deities who presented air (Shu) and moisture (Tefnut); then Tefnut gave birth to the sky (Goddess Nut) and the earth (God Geb). Humans were often conceived to be the products of Amun or Ra's tears.



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Deities and Ancient Egyptians

A general realizing of the worldview of the ancient Egyptians is the best grooming for this brief examination of their throwing array of deities. The term  "world view" refers the set of widely held feeling that people of a specific culture  hold to excuse what they maintain in their world. The ancient Egyptians interpreted every natural event in terms of the family relationship between natural and supernatural forces. Those phenomena that figured conspicuously in their lives enclosed the annual cycle of the flood of the Nile River (or inundation), the extended size and frozen harshness of the surrounding desert, and the daily cycle of the sun's coming into court in the east, gradual movement crossways the sky, and eventual disappearing in the west. The ancient Egyptians got a world view in which these and other events and checks were imputed to the actions of multiple, concerned gods and goddesses of Egypt.

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Leisure Activities in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptians taken their leisure time with many pleasant natural processes. They loved good food, drink, music, singing, and dancing. The upper class watched professed dancers at formal banquets. A number of musical instruments accompanied the dancers. The flute, oboe, trumpet, and an cat's-paw resembling a clarinet were the nearly common wind official documents; stringed instruments included various types of harps, lutings, and lyres; and tambourines and thumps were the normal percussion section instruments. In rituals, sistra and glossas were used. Other leisure activenesses included hunting, fowling, and fishing for sport. Hunters practiced a bow and arrow for most game--ibex, gazelle, wild cattle, ostriches, and hares. Fowling and fishing took place in marshlands. For fowling, Egyptians used a hold stick that acted like a boomerang, fair the bird and bumping it out of the sky. For fishing a long, double-barbed lance was used.

The ancient Egyptians enjoyed pets. The dog was the nearly common. Cats as well went popular. The wealthy sometimes had monkeys or baboons.

Members of literate homes (5 percent at about) enjoyed reading. In the gentle of their homes, the ancient Egyptians played a number of card games, the most favorite being senet. Ancient Egyptian children had games and entertainments corresponding to those of Egyptian children today. A number of clean toys like balls and dolls have been seen in tombs. Many details of the Egyptians' daily lives still remain hidden. As archaeologists break more tomb paintings and uncover extra artifacts from burial sites and towns, our noesis of their taking culture increments.

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The Home in Ancient Egypt

Frontispiece of a house
toward the street,
second Theban period
As in our current society, the size and appearance of an Egyptian house reckoned on the family's wealth and the placement of the building. A typical non professional's home in a city would have a small court facing a close street with a hardly a rooms at the back; It had windows come out high in the walls and reported with wicket work to exclude heat and the sun's glare. Steps at the rear of the house led up to a flat roof, where the family often slept to enjoy the picnics blowing off the desert. Houses were constructed of dried mud bricks. Although these bricks were inexpensive and enabled fast building, they were not extended over a long period of time.

Two plans of houses, Medinet Habu
Egyptian bases had kitchens, and most kitchens were fit with cylindrical, baked clay range for preparing. The basic cooking equipment was a two hands pottery saucepan.

Ancient house with vaulted
floors, against the northern
wall of the great
temple of Medinet Habu
The few furnishings in the ancient Egyptian home were easy in design, although the craftsmanship varied. The most common set up of piece of furniture was a low stool, used by all Egyptians admitting the pharaoh. These were made from wood, had leather or braided rush places, and had three or four legs. Usually the three-legged make was used for work because floors were shifting. They used tables, which were often low, for eating and good.

The Egyptian bed had a wooden shape with legs often shaped like the legs of animals; a woven rush mat served as "springs." At one end of the bed was a foot-board; at the different end, a wooden or stone headrest, which was equal to our rest.

Lamps were old to light the house after dark. They were, for the most part, simple pottery or stone bowls containing oil and a taper. The ancient Egyptians did not have closets as we have in modern houses. They practiced wooden boxfuls or baskets to store their home goods. Their food was laid in in wheel-made pottery.

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