Thoth, the Author of the Book of the Dead

Thoth, in Egyptian Tchehuti or Tehuti, or , who has already been named as the author of the texts that form the PER-T EM HRU, or Book of the Dead, was believed by the Egyptians to have been the heart and brain of the Creator, who was in very early times in Egypt named by the natives "Pautti," and by foreigners "Ra." Thoth was also the "tongue" of the Creator, and he at all times voiced the will of the great god, and spoke the words which required every being and affair in heaven and in earth to come into existence. His words were powerful and once uttered never staid on without effect. He set up the laws by which heaven, earth and all the ethereal bodies are held; he ordered the forms of the sun, moon, and stars; he invented making and purpose and the arts, the letters of the alphabet and the art of writing, and the science of math. At a very early period he was called the "scribe (or secretary) of the Great Company of the Gods," and as he kept the divine register of the words and works of men, he was seen by many propagations of Egyptians as the "Recording Angel." He was the inventor of physical and moral Law and became the prosopopoeia of justice; and as the Companies of the Gods of Heaven, and Earth, and the Other World established him to "weigh the words and deeds" of men, and his verdicts were last, he got more powerful in the Other World than Osiris himself. Osiris owed his triumph over Set in the Great Judgment Hall of the Gods entirely to the skill of Thoth of the "wise mouth" as an Advocate, and to his mold with the gods in heaven. And every follower of Osiris relied upon the advocacy of Thoth to good his acquittal on the Day of Judgment, and to secure for him an everlasting habitation in the Kingdom of Osiris.

Related Posts:

What is the Book of the Dead?
The History of the Book of The Dead
The Book of The Dead in the First Dynasty
The Book of The Dead in the Second Dynasty
The Book of The Dead in the Fourth Dynasty
The Book of The Dead in the Fifth Dynasty
The Book of The Dead in the sixth Dynasty
The Book of The Dead in the Ptolemy Period
Labels:

The Book of The Dead in the Ptolemy Period

The Saite and Ptolemaic version was in vogue from the period of the 26th dynasty, about B.C. 5 5 0, tr belike the end of the rule of the Ptolemies over Egypt. The chapters have a fixed and definite order, and it seems that a careful alteration of the whole work was executed, and that several changes of an essential nature were made in it. A number of chapters which are not seen in older papyri come out during this period, but these are not necessarily new designs, for, as the kings of the 26th dynasty are famous for having renovated the arts and sciences and literature of the early dynasties, it is quite viable that many or most of the supplemental chapters are nothing more than new editions of evokes fron older works. Some copies of this rendering were written by scribes who did not picture what they were copying, and skips of signs, words, and even whole passageways are very common, in papyri of the Ptolemaic period it is impossible to read many transits without the help of texts of earlier periods. The papyri of this period vary in colour from a light to a dark brown, and consist commonly of layers composed of strips of the plant measurement about 2 inches in width and 14'/2 to 16 inches in length. Fine examples of Books of the Dead of this version vary in length from about 24'/2 feet (B.M. No. 10,479, written for the utclieb Heru, the son of the utclieb Tchehra) to 60 feet. Hieroglyphical texts are written in black, in heavy rows between rules, and hieratic texts in horizontal lines; both the hieroglyphs and the hieratic characters lack the boldness of the writing of the Theban period, and exhibit the characteristics o a straight hand. The titles of the chapters, shibboleths, the words ,,,  which present a variant reading, etc., are sometimes written in red. The vignettes are usually drawn in black outline, and fonn a kind of constant border above the text. In good papyri, however, the scene fonning the XVIth Chapter the scene of the Fields of Peace (Chapter CX.), the judgment scene (Chapter CXXV.), the vignette of Chapter CXLVIII., the scene working Chapter CLI. (the rank chamber), and the vignette of Chapte CLXI., fill the who[e width of the inscribed portion of the papyrus, and are painted in slightly crude colours. In some papyri the disk on the head of the hawk of Horus is covered with gold leaf, instead of being painted red as is familiar in older papyri. In the Graeco-Roman period both texts and vignettes are very carelessly executed, and it is broad that they were written and drawn by clueless workmen in the quickest and most careless way possible. In this period also certain passages of the text were copied in hieratic and Demotic upon small pieces of papyri which were buried with portions of the bodies of the dead, and upon narrow bandages of coarse linen in which they were swaddled.

Related Posts:

Labels:

The Book of The Dead in the sixth Dynasty

Evidence of the text of the pyramid of Teta, pyramids of King Pepi I, King Merenre and King Pepi II.

Continuing his diggings at Saqqara, M. Maspero given the pyramid of Teta, king of Egypt about B.C. 3300, which Vyse view had never been entered, and of which, in his day, the masonry on oneside only could be seen. Here again it was found that hooks had already been at work, and that they had wet in pieces walls, Aoors, and many other characters of the chambers in their frantic search for treasure. As in the case of the pyramid of Unas, distinct chambers, etc., of this tomb were found covered with letterings in hieroglyphics, but of a earlier size. A brief testing of the text showed it to be formed of a series of draws from the Book of the Dead, some of which were very with those in the pyramid of Unas. Thus was brought round light a Book of the Dead of the time of the first king of the 6th dynasty.

The pyramid of King Pepi I., king of Egypt about B.C. 3233, was next opened. It is set in the central group at Saqqara, and is commonly known as the pyramid of Shkh Abu-Mansur. Certain chambers and other functions of the tomb were found to be covered with hieroglyphic texts, which not only continual in part those which had been got in the pyramids of Unas and Teta, but also contained a considerable number of additional sections of the Book of the Dead. In the same neighbourhood M. Maspero, made out the pyramid of Merenre, the fourth king of the 6th dynasty, about B.C. 3200, and the pyramid of King Pepi II., the fifth pharaoh of the 6th dynasty, about B.C. 3166.

Related Posts:

Labels:

The Book of The Dead in the Fifth Dynasty

In the 5th dynasty we have - in an raised number of mastabas and other monuments - evidence of the extension of religious ceremonies, including the solemnization of funeral rites, but a text fonning the Book of the Dead as a whole does not occur until the rule of Unas (B.C. 3333), the last king of the dynasty, who according to the Turin papyrus dominated 30 years. This monarch built on the plain of Saqqara a stone pyramid about sixty-two feet high, each side measurement about two hundred feet at the base. In the time of Perring and Vyse it was involved by heaps of grown stone and rubbish, the result of recurring attempts to open it, and with the casing stones, which consisted of little limestone from the quarries of Tura. In February, 1881, M. Maspero began to have the pyramid, and soon after he won in making an entrance into the innennost chambers, the walls of which were extended with hieroglyphic inscriptions, didst in perpendicular lines and painted in green. The condition of the home showed that at some time or other thieves had already won in making an entrance, for the address of the black basalt sarcophagus of Unas had beer turned off and moved good the door of the sarcophagus chamber, the pavement stones had been pulled in the vain set about to find buried treasure, the mummy had been broken to pieces, and nothing remained of it take out the right arm, a tibia, and some fragments of the skull and body. The inscriptions which addressed certain walls and corridors in the tomb were later published by M. Maspero. The appearing of the text of Unas marks an era in the history of the Book of the Dead, and its rendering must be seen as one of the greatest victories of Egyptological decipherment, for the want of detenninatives in many places in the text, and the archaic spelling of numerous of the words and passages represented difficulties which were not easily overcome. Here, for the first time, it was established that the Book of the Dead was no compilation of a comparatively late period in the history of Egyptian civilization, but a work belonging to a very remote antiquity; and it followed naturally that texts which were then known, and which were thought to be themselves direct ancient texts, raised to be only versions which had passed through two or more successive rescripts.

Related Posts:


Labels:

The Book of The Dead in the Fourth Dynasty

With the 4th dynasty we have an inflated number of monuments, chiefly sepulchral, which give details as to the Egyptian priestly system and the funeral ceremonies which the priests perfonned. The inscriptions upon the earlier monuments prove that some of the priestly officials were still relatives of the royal family, and the tomb of feudal lords, scribblers, and others, record a number of their official titles, together with the names of some of their religious festivals. The subsequent gain in the number of the monuments during this period may be due to the natural development of the religion of the time, but it is very probable that the greater security of life and holding which had been assured by the vigorous wars of Seneferu, the firs king of this dynasty, about B.C. 3766, encouraged men to incur greater write off, and to build larger and better abodes for the dead, and to fete the full ritual at the established festivals. In this dynasty the royal dead were honoured with offensive monuments of a greater size and richness than had ever before been studied, and the chapels affiliated to the pyramids were served by courses of priests whose sole duties lay in in celebrating the services. The fashion of building a pyramid rather of the rectangular Aat-roofed mastaba for a royal tomb was revived by Seneferu, who visited his pyramid Kha, and his example was followed by his immediate successors, Khufu (Cheops), Khafre (Chephren), Menkaure (Mycerinus), and others.

In the reign of Mycerinus some essential work seems to have been under taken in connector with certain sections of the text of the Book of the Dead, for the titles of Chapters XXXB. and CXLVIII. state that these reports were found inscribed upon "a block of iron(?) of the south in letters of real lapis-lazuli under the feet of the stateliness of the god in the time of the King it of the North and South Menkaure, by the royal son Herutataf, victorious." That a new impulse should be given to religious observances, and that the revision of been sacred texts should take place in the reign of Mycerinus, was only to be expected if Greek tradition may be believed, for both Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus symbolise him as a just king, and one who was upset to efface from the psyches of the people the memory of the alleged cruelty of his predecessor by re-opening the temples and by letting every man celebrate his own sacrifices and dispatch his own religious duties. His pyramid is the one now known as the "third pyramid of Giza," under which he was sank in a chamber vertically below the apex and 60 feet below the level oi the ground. Whether the pyramid was finished or not when the king died, his body was sure laid in it, and notwithstanding all the efforts made by the Muhainmadan rulers of Egypt to destroy it at the end of the 12th century of our era, it has was to yield up important facts for the history of the Book of the Dead.

Related Posts:


Labels:

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.
 
Related Posts:


Labels:

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.


Related Posts:

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

Labels:

The History of the Book of The Dead

Labels:

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.
Labels:

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.

Related Posts:

 Preparing for Afterlife
The Burial Rites in Ancient Egypt
Mummification in Ancient Egypt
Labels:

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.

Recent Posts:

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

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".

Recent Posts:


Labels:

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.

Related Posts:


Labels:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)

Labels