Page 60 - September 2022 Magazine - Bumper Edition

Book of the Dead - 'Weighing of the Heart' f f o o u u n n d d o o n n t t h h e e w w a a l l l l s s o o f f t t h h e e T To o m m b b o o f f M M e e n n n n a a i i n n t t h h e e Thebes Necropolis (18th Dynasty)
The Book of the Dead was not just one book, as you would see in the movies, with a special key to open it to reveal its secrets.
It is a compilation of texts, hieroglyphs, and drawings of incantations, hymns, prayers, and spells, collected together to assist the deceased navigate through the treacherous underworld (Duet to the ancients) to the afterlife.
The ancients called this book the ‘Book of Coming Forth by Day’. For each of the deceased, a new transcript would be written and made just for them by the priests or scribes of that era and placed inside their tomb, either on the walls, on the coffins or sarcophagus, or on papyrus.
So let’s take a brief peek at its history and how it developed...
Initially, traditional funerary texts were used on the walls of the burial chambers within pyramids and tombs, for kings and queens exclusively, and can be dated back as far as the Old Kingdom, found in the pyramid of King Unas of the 5th Dynasty.
These funerary texts were known as the ‘Pyramid Texts’, and their purpose was to help the dead king
The Egyptian Book of the
Dead
Book of Coming
Forth by Day
60 |The Flickering Cauldron® Magazine - The Book of the Dead