Book of the Dead

LIBRO DEI MORTI. — Name by which the first Egyptologists designated a collection of religious formulas, prayers, and hymns written on papyrus rolls which, from the New Kingdom (16th cent. B.C.) until the Greco-Roman period, the Egyptians placed in the sarcophagi of their dead. The L. dei m. was generally written in hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts, while in the Late Period demotic was also used; in most cases the text is accompanied by illustrative vignettes, often in color. Many specimens are true masterpieces of calligraphic precision and pictorial liveliness. The compilation results from the combination of chapters or paragraphs arranged without any logical order of succession. The total number, and often the sequence, of the chapters varies from one specimen to another; the textual variants are also numerous.

The purpose of the L. dei m. was to provide the dead with a handbook by means of which they could face the various contingencies of the afterlife. The title of the compilation corresponds in Egyptian to “coming forth by day” and implies the fundamental aspiration to emerge from the darkness of the tomb in order to see the light of the sun again. The antecedents of the L. dei m. are to be sought in the Testi delle Piramidi (funerary formulas found in the royal tombs of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties and composed exclusively for kings), in which the ascent to heaven of the deceased sovereign and his deification were celebrated. Equally important for establishing the genesis of the L. dei m. are the formularies of the Middle Kingdom known under the name Testi dei sarcofagi, reserved for a wider circle of persons.

The L. dei m., which reveals a more popular character, devotes a predominant part to magical formulas intended to eliminate a danger or procure a bene-

fit. Thus there are formulas for securing food and nourishment, for protection from crocodiles and snakes, for keeping the limbs intact, for moving freely through the realm of the dead, for “coming forth by day,” for having oneself replaced in the corvées, for identifying oneself with particular divinities, etc. Some invocations to the gods take the form of genuine religious hymns of considerable length: particularly noteworthy are the so-called “litanies of Osiris.”

But the most interesting chapter from the moral point of view is devoted to the negative confession. The fundamental idea was that the deceased, in order to gain access to the realm of Osiris, had to “justify himself” before the god himself and a commission of 42 judges. Having entered the courtroom, the person seeking justification enumerated the sinful actions he had not committed, while the god Thoth verified the truthfulness of the confession on a scale bearing the name of the deceased on one side and the symbol of truth on the other (psychostasia).

The sins can be reduced to two categories: against the gods (e.g., not having blasphemed, not having removed offerings from the temples, not having profaned sacred places, etc.) and against human beings (e.g., not having killed, not having committed adultery, not having stolen, not having falsified weights and measures, etc.). If the verdict was favorable, the deceased was declared “true of voice” and admitted to the realm of the dead; otherwise, his soul was devoured by a monstrous animal and annihilated forever. Naturally, possessing the L. dei m., rather than the complete list of the individual judges and the invocations relating to each of them, implied de iure the successful outcome of the judgment.

Finally, some chapters describe and illustrate life in the realm of Osiris, where the “true of voice” are occupied with cultivating extraordinarily fertile fields.