BOOK OF THE DEAD. - Name by which the first Egyptologists designated a collection of formulas, prayers and religious hymns written on papyrus rolls which, from the New Kingdom (16th century B.C.) until the Greco-Roman age, the Egyptians placed in the sarcophagus of their deceased. The B. of the D. was commonly written in hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts, while in late times demotic was also used; in the majority of cases the text is accompanied by illustrative vignettes, often in color. Many copies are true masterpieces of calligraphic precision and pictorial vividness. The collection results from the union of chapters or paragraphs arranged without a logical order of succession. The overall number and often the succession of the chapters vary from one copy to another; the variants of the text are also numerous.
The purpose of the B. of the D. was to provide the deceased with a handbook with which they could face the various contingencies of the afterlife. The title of the collection corresponds in Egyptian to "the going forth into the day" and implies the fundamental aspiration of being able to emerge from the darkness of the tomb to see again the light of the sun. The antecedents of the B. of the D. must be sought in the Pyramid Texts (funerary formulas found in the royal tombs of the V and VI dynasties and composed solely for kings), in which the ascent to heaven of the deceased sovereign and his deification were exalted. Equally important for establishing the genesis of the B. of the D. are the formulary texts of the Middle Kingdom known under the name of Coffin Texts, reserved for a broader circle of people.
The B. of the D., which reveals a more popular character, reserves a preponderant part for magical formulas intended to eliminate a danger or to procure a benefit.
Thus one reads the formulas for securing food and provisions, for protecting oneself from crocodiles and serpents, for preserving one's limbs intact, for being able to circulate freely in the kingdom of the dead, for "going forth into the day," for having oneself replaced in the corvées, for identifying oneself with particular deities, etc. Some invocations to the gods take the form of true religious hymns of considerable length: worthy of note are the so-called "litany of Osiris."
But the most interesting chapter from the moral point of view is reserved for the negative confession. The fundamental idea was that according to which the deceased, in order to gain access to the kingdom of Osiris, had to "justify himself" before the god himself and before a commission of 42 judges. The one being justified, having entered the hall of the tribunal, enumerated the sinful actions he had not committed, while the god Thoth verified the truthfulness of the confession on a balance bearing on one side the name of the deceased, on the other the symbol of truth (psychostasia).
The sins can be reduced to two categories: against the gods (e.g., not having blasphemed, not having stolen the offerings from the temples, not having profaned sacred places, etc.) and against men (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 "just of voice" and admitted into the kingdom of the dead; in the contrary case his soul was devoured by a monstrous animal and annihilated forever. Naturally the possession of the B. of the D., not the complete list of the individual judges and the invocations relating to each of them, implied de iure the successful outcome of the judgment.
Some chapters finally describe and illustrate life in the kingdom of Osiris where the "just of voice" are intent on cultivating prodigiously fertile fields.
Bibliography2 works
1898. For other versions and studies cf. I. A. Pratt, Ancient Egypt, New York 1925, pp. 372-77; id., Ancient Egypt 1926-47, ibid. 1942, pp. 259-60.
Sergio Bosticco