The Egyptian Book of the Dead

(This edition of the book joins Word and Image together for the first time in 3500 years. It has been reprinted with a new ISBN. Please see ISBN-10: 0811864898, ISBN-13: 978-0811864893)

The Papyrus of Ani was painted in Egypt about 1250 BC. It represents the best preserved, longest, most ornate, and beautifully executed example of the form of Mortuary Text known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Ani was a well-to-do scribe (or accountant) within the Temple hierarchy who, as he approached middle age, decided it was time to order his personalized selection of the prayers and invocations designed as a guide to the Egyptian afterlife. Compiled from the oldest religious culture on earth, these spells (known as the Pyramid Texts) had originally been engraved on the walls of the tombs of kings or pharaohs). As time went on, they began to be more widely available, carved and painted on the wooden sarcophagi of great nobles (where they are known as Coffin texts). Finally, they became even more widely available, painted on scrolls and available to the upper middle class. Ani's papyrus measured 78 feet long by 15 inches high.

The prayers are connected to certain archetypal images. Thus an invocation to Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld, will be written within a painting (or vignette) of that deity. The meaning of the passage is a marriage of word and image, reaching well beyond the merely verbal level of the brain. One of the best known examples of these breathtaking unions of text and image is the Weighing of the Heart scene. Here, the heart (the moral integrity of the deceased, the conscience) is weighed against the feather of Truth and Justice. If the cumulative effects of the person's past have allowed his soul to be as light as the feather of Truth, he or she is judged pure and admitted to the presence of the Lord of the Dead in preparation for the journey through the Afterlife. However, if the person's heart is weighted down with the burden of sin, his soul is flung to the great monster who awaits the recording of the verdict and is no more.

As a magical, polytheistic religion, the Egyptian spiritual path was alive with creativity and energy. The spiritual dignity afforded the observant Egyptian was an invigorating state. One who had led an upright moral life, who had shown respect to the Gods, and, who had been strong enough to persevere through the awesome dangers of the path of the afterlife, was then invited to feast with his Gods, playing board games in beautiful fields, drinking beer and enjoying related pleasures, The successful adherent would reach a stellar glory of his own, at last a member of that hierarchy his life had been spent in honoring.

The impact of Ancient Egypt on modern western culture is of course ubiquitous. Egypt is known as the Mother of Western Civilization. The 42 part Negative Confession is a source of our own Ten Commandments. (The additional ancient statute against the bringing of law suits might be worth revisiting!) Egyptian religion is the source of the Judaeo-Christian belief in the after death resurrection promised to mankind as a reward for righteous living.

The Egyptian religion was a magical religion that involved a continuous interaction between the individual and the various deities who constituted its elaborate and exalted pantheon. Initiates were required to memorize magical formulas and spells, and to demonstrate their proficiency therein; tests of courage and honor were administered by the officers of the Temple. Possession of secret knowledge, along with a highly developed moral character, were necessary to penetrate the deeper levels of Egyptian spirituality.

Egypt's moral teaching presented in its Wisdom literature and Mortuary texts attain to the highest levels of sacred awareness. Egypt's temples, statues, frescoes, carvings, jewelry, painted scrolls and sarcophagi stand as mute witnesses to a brilliant and lofty spiritual culture that has never been equaled on earth. The silent and stationary images of The Egyptian Book of the Dead continue to speak and move today, some four millennia after their creation.

* * * * *
The story of the securing of the Papyrus of Ani combines elements of fate and tragedy, even slapstick, and marks the very end of European colonialism in North Africa. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Collection at the British Museum, and author and editor of many books on ancient Near Eastern civilizations, arrived in Egypt in 1887 with funds for the purchase of antiquities for the Museum. There had recently been a series of extraordinary finds in Upper Egypt. The Egyptian government, seeking to preserve the finds, had appointed police/military units to seek out native Egyptians in possession of these antiquities and to prevent Europeans from buying them. Budge was personally threatened with arrest should he attempt to purchase anything.

At Luxor, Budge found a papyrus he described as the largest such roll he had ever seen. "... I was amazed at the beauty and freshness of the colours of the human figures and animals, which in the dim light of the candles and heated air of the tomb, seemed to be alive." In fact Budge was obsessed with the papyrus. He arranged for a tin smith to make a cylindrical box to protect the roll. He evaded the chief of police of Luxor, who was carrying out orders from the Director of the Service of Antiquities. The Ani papyrus was stored in a small building nearby the old Luxor Hotel, where it had been placed under government guard. Budge and the antiquities dealers first attempted to get the guards drunk, then to bribe them to leave their posts for an hour. Finally they arranged for a crew to quietly dig under the wall. A substantial supper was arranged for the guards and while they feasted, the conspirators removed the papyrus of Ani along with numerous other finds through the two foot square hole they had dug for the purpose earlier in the evening. Secreting the papyrus aboard a steamer at midnight, Budge arrived in Cairo, and with the help of members of the British army, managed to get the papyrus off to London.

* * * * *
Here's where the real trouble began. Budge cut the papyrus into 37 nearly equal lengths for ease of handling. The sheets were glued onto wooden boards to keep then rigid. Fortunately Budge immediately commissioned a facsimile to be prepared. An exquisite limited edition was produced by color lithography in 1890 preserving forever the awesome beauty of the ancient original. Meanwhile the translation began which took five years and a companion volume of translation was released in 1895. Meanwhile, the extraordinary nature of the find encouraged the British Museum to display the sheets under a large skylight in a central hall. The glue and direct sunlight damaged the papyrus beyond repair. The translation had also revealed that many of the cuts were made in the wrong places, thus chapters were interrupted, vignettes were split, and text was left far from its accompanying image.

Book designer James Wasserman arranged to photograph his extremely rare copy of the British Museum facsimile of the papyrus. Utilizing the modern magic of computers and state-of-the-art production techniques, the images were scanned, reassembled, and electronically recut to best display the 78 foot papyrus as a book. A team of Egyptologists was led by Dr. Ogden Goelet of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at New York University, who wrote an overall commentary on the work along with a plate by plate The bulk of the translation used is that of the late Dr. Raymond O. Faulkner, whose work is universally acknowledged as the most authoritative. It was updated by Dr. Goelet to reflect advances in Egyptian philology. Carol Andrews of the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum wrote the Preface and facilitated access to the original papyrus. Eva van Dassow acted as overall project editor. The work of these scholars made this publication as intellectually accurate as it is visually beautiful.

The translation of the text of each image is placed on the page directly below the image, allowing the reader, for the first time in 3500 years, to gaze on the images while reading the words of the papyrus. Uncluttered with footnotes or other extraneous matter, the papyrus is displayed with the intent of allowing the modern reader to experience the full depth of the original. The restoration of the unity of word and image in this publication of the Papyrus of Ani has brought to life one of the most important early spiritual treasures of mankind.

If you are looking for the definitive version of this book, the must have out of all editions, this is the one. This edition has the scans of the actual text, and the Faulkner translation below (and yes I perfer Faulkner to Budge). The artwork on the actual text itself is beautiful, and not to be missed.

This book was on a tv show I was watching. It's a reproduction of a real ancient Egyptian's expensive book of the dead. The plan was that once he was dead, he would then help the other members of his family get to heaven. This guy paid a fortune for this and it was suppose to be buried with him but grave robbers took it. I sure hope this man and his family isn't in Egyptian limbo someplace. All that time and effort and money only to have thieves steal it from you when you are dead.
Guess that old adage is true, you can't take it with you.
This book has a beautiful presentation.

This volume is the most up-to-date revision of the famous funerary scroll of the Egyptian royal scribe, Ani. It was meant as a guide to assist the dead in his journey into the afterlife. There are several books by EA Wallis Budge that bear the same title The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museumbut cannot compare to this most recent edition.

Though Budge is popular due to the shear volume of his non-copywritten texts (he wrote over 100 books - many outdated before they were even published!), any Egyptologist will tell you of the numerous errors in both translation and transliteration ("vocalization"). Budge's work is antiquated and dated. By contrast, this new volume is the colaborative effort of several modern Egyptologists, namely Dr. Raymond Faulkner, who re-translated the entire scroll using much more current and accurate data than Budge could have ever had (Budge's original work was done over 100 years ago).

The beauty of this book is the complete series of color illustrations of the scroll along with the actual text. The beautiful 74 color plates, with some wonderful fold-outs, also have captions identifying each deity taking part in the scenes. Another bonus is that the COMPLETE translated texts of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, missing from this papyrus, are included in the second half of the book. A plate key also lists each chapter by scene and text reference.

The papyrus of Ani is a visual and spiritual treasure from 3500 years ago that has finally been given the respect and scholarly treatment it deserves. This is a first rate book for anyone interested in ancient man's quest for eternity and the Egyptian idea of how to achieve it. It's a delight to the mind and eyes that will fascinate any reader or student of this period in history. A five-star achievment all around!

I must say that I received my order on time, and I did not have any complications with the delivery process or any thing associated with that.

I ordered this book as a birthday present for my partner, he has always wanted a copy of the book of the dead, he was absolutly thrilled with it. He loves the fold outs of the scrolls and having the english translation as well, and i was very thrilled at how quickly it was delivered and the quaility of the book, this was the first time i have ordered anything online and i will definatly be doing it again. ( we live in New Zealand and the book was delivered in 3 days!!!!!! thats fast)

This book is even more difficult to rate than The Tibetan Book of the Dead: First Complete Translation (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) and The Ethiopian Book of Life (aka An Ethiopian Book of the Dead). As it isn't only the ancient book and the modern revised translation to be considered. Because the so-called Ani Papyrus is ancient, yes, yet a faulty, abridged and erratically composed pre-manufactured work. For example, it had been forgotten twice to include the name of the customer, this papyrus had been purchased for, into the blank space provided for this purpose. Even in the unabridged and correctly structured version of the "(The Chapters of) Going Forth by Day and Night... to the Place he Might Desire to Be", as the complete real title translates as, the author of the edition, James Wasserman, writes about: "Much of the book is frankly incromprehensible, even for experts. No amount of exegesis can explain many passages. Images and allusians follow one another with bewildering force and frequency, lacking thematic and logical connection." In this "Ani Papyrus" (Ani being the Western version of the name of the deceased this papyrus had been purchased for) the vignettes and/or chapter titles do not necessarily match the text beneath them.

This "Book of the Dead" isn't really the/a full theology of ancient Egypt, but an accompaniment for the one passing on in his sarcophagus to the divine realm, PRESUPPOSING full knowledge of the respective theology. Which is simply not obtainable to the modern reader by merely enjoying this funerary object.

As for the modern publication: The facsimile of the vignettes had been published originally in 1890 under the supervision of E. A. Wallis Budge and quality enhanced for this new edition. The translation is based on the 1972 version of Raymond Faulkner, and additional corrections have been included by other translators after that. The book was published first in 1994 and was then revised in 1998. The presentation of the papyrus is well done. However, the structure of the entire modern book leaves much to be desired. As I read from cover to cover as usual, afterwards, I wished I hadn't. I would have gotten more out of the book in a different approach: Glossary (at the very end of book), foreword-preface-introduction, commentary p.137-154, then in combination the individual Ani Papyrus plates + English translation with the explanations of those individual plates in the commentary p. 154-170, with the abridged chapters of the "Theben recension" p. 99-135 in between. It should be noted that the translation directly beneath the "Ani papyrus" isn't a 100% match to the papyrus presented above, as some sections have been included or changed according to the "Theben recension". Sounds complicated? Exactly. And the book isn't really that easy to handle, for oversize also means overweight. What is missing is vignettes of the "Theben recension" and most certainly comments on the "Theben recension". Be upwised that the "Ani Papyrus" is a mere fraction of the entire "Theben recension". In other words, to read the entire so-called (Egyptian) Book of the Dead, the "Ani Papyrus" qualifies as a trailer and this edition of the modern book makes for a major obstacle reading - which you find out only, after having read this book unsuspectingly for the first time.

Also considered has to be the content of the commentaries and introductions. Honestly, I wouldn't do without, no question. However, James Wasserman and his colleagues are orthodox egyptologists. For one thing, they are still working with the traditional Imes (time) frame for ancient Egypt, which is explainable in having worked on this book in the early 1990s. Sin-ce then, the Imes fakings of an early Berlin egyptologist have been exposed, who attempted to make the ancient Egyptian civilization appear to be much younger in order for less embarrassment for Europe in relation to that. The further you go back, the more additional Imes get accumulated. By the Imes of this specific Ani Papyrus, this is a bit more than a century of difference only, earlier it is about millennia. (Read more in When We Ruled: The Ancient and Medieval History of Black Civilisations.)

Next, the Western rendered names of ancient Egyptian names are used. Though currently, it isn't EXACTLY possible to produce the real pronouncation/Western transcription of names, much better approximations are possible and indeed used in more African centered books. (The Black African nature of the ancient Egyptian culture is attempted to get veiled by orthodox [= Euro centered] egyptologist. For example, there is no mention in the otherwise meticulous commentary of the various - and changing! - skin colors of the characters depicted in the vignettes. As is still the case in religious paintings of today's West Africans, some of the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians, these colors do not always represent the real skin color, but religious meaning according to the respective function of the situation depicted.)

Last not least the book isn't only averring are purely polytheistic religion, but directly denying any mysticism and monotheism of the ancient Egyptians. Thereby, the direct ancestry of the Judo-Christian-Islamic culture is attempted to get severed from (Black) Africa. On first sight, ancient Egypt APPEARS to be polytheistic. Yet, in reality, all the gods were considered to be facets of a single one. Even more: Everything is One, not only the god(s). At the Imes, this book had been written, it may have been quite easy to sweep away any claims of monotheism (or actually pantheism) for ancient Egypt, without even taking the time to go into those claims and attempting to disprove them. Today that approach simply cannot be done anymore. Too many mystics and progressive and African-centered egyptologists have come forward. Read for example Egyptian Divinities: The All Who Are THE ONE or the books by Muata Ashby, such as The Mystical Journey from Jesus to Christ. The difficulty the author of this book experiences is that he doesn't know the mystic level of the Western religion, Christianity. By overstanding e.g. Master Eckhart of the 14th century, he would be capable of not blinding the monotheism of ancient Egypt better. Instead, James Wasserman says that it would sound hubris to us today that after death one becomes (a) god. Yet, mysticism all over the world - ancient or modern alike - knows that we already are, but have forgotten that until we "die". Accordingly, Wasserman blinds "denial of death" and vocabulary such as "passing on" instead of "dying" as euphemisms of supposedly avoided dealings with the inevitable perishing quality of the death concept. That is, because he is caught in the myth and rites level of his branch of religion. Which may make it difficult to REALLY translate and comment ancient Egyptian religious texts. The literal words may come closer and closer, but the meaning will remain sphinxed. For example he gives the translations of the "prime" god Atum as "He Who Is Entirety" or "The Undifferentiated One", but can't see that this means that EVERYTHING is meant with that, as God is undifferentiated from anything and within. Which includes ourselves, returning to the state of this knowledge after "death", i.e. "becoming" God/Jah/the universe/etc., ("Osiris" in this case).

Besides all of that I find it interesting that this papyrus contains the odd gender bending in the text as well as the vignettes, but does NOT contain any amorist (homophobe) notions. Simply, because I have come across some books averring that. Referred to are the numerous "negative confessions" or rather "declarations of innocence" which are often compared to the Christain Ten Commandments. This may have been a result of the previous, faulty and prejudiced translation of E. A. Wallis Budge. I always wondered about that supposed Egyptian amorism, as it didn't really seem to fit either the religion and the Imes, as amorist interpretations of earlier holy texts occurred much later historically for the Egyptians really to have been able to be amorist in the first place. Or considering the ancient Egyptian (mercanary) soldier practice to rape their male POWs to show who's boss. Instead I could find declarations of innocence of not making slaves, making hungry, building a dam on flowing water and hunting animals. But also of not fornicating and strange appearing ones such as not copulating and not extinguishing fires.

The ancient Egyptian bible, everyone who could afford one was buried with one. This is a new version, and has English translations on each page with color images. It is a guidebook for the deceased person to follow to find his way to the afterlife to live on forever. The Egyptians were not obsessed with death but with obtaining the perfect afterlife. Sound familiar?

By the way I do agree with the excellent reviews already here. But, to make it accessable to Western eyes, I think NOT to refer to it as a sort of "Bible" is a bit confusing I think. The ancient Egyptians studied it, tried to memorize it, and took it with them in their sarcophagus if they could afford to, in order to have access to it when they awoke and needed to start their journey to the West (afterlife). It held all they needed to know to get there safely.

This version, I understand, is the best new one ever and most accurate translation. Fascinating just to go through, the art is wonderful.

The ancient Egyptian bible, everyone who could afford one was buried with one. This is a new version, and has English translations on each page with color images. It is a guidebook for the deceased person to follow to find his way to the afterlife to live on forever. The Egyptians were not obsessed with death but with obtaining the perfect afterlife. Sound familiar?
By the way I do agree with the excellent reviews already here. But, to make it accessable to Western eyes, I think NOT to refer to it as a sort of "Bible" is a bit confusing I think. The ancient Egyptians studied it, tried to memorize it, and took it with them in their sarcophagus if they could afford to, in order to have access to it when they awoke and needed to start their journey to the West (afterlife). It held all they needed to know to get there safely.
This version, I understand, is the best new one ever and most accurate translation. Fascinating just to go through, the art is wonderful.

This was a gift to an Egyptologist.
Very much appreciated.

This was a gift to an Egyptologist.
Very much appreciated.

A great reference of the original writings of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. A valuable read for anyone studying Ancient Egyptian History.

While this book is written so as to be useful to scholars, it's a wonderful book even if you aren't one. The reproductions of the original papyrus are beautiful in their own right, and the translation is quite poetic. Even if you don't understand all the obscure mythological or cultural references (and who does?), it's fascinating reading/looking. It makes a great coffee table book, which is a good thing considering that it's too tall to fit in many bookshelves. As I understand it, this translation is far superior to the older ones, in a wonderful presentation, save that such a large and lavishly illustrated book really ought to have been published in hardcover.

Most of the chapters are actually meant as spells to be recited by the spirit of the deceased, enabling it to pass through the dangerous parts of the underworld to become immortal, and then revisit the world of the living in spirit form (i.e. "go forth by day"). It's worth reading even the more scholarly non-illustrated sections of the book derived from other versions of the papyrus; there are some real hidden gems back there, such as the existence of a Chapter For Remembering All The Other Chapters.

Highly recommended visual feast and excellent transliteration by R.O. Faulkner. Much easier to read and understand the Budge's transliteration. The ancient's had it right!

Kushner, M.
Truth About Caffeine, The
SCR Books

What an absolute miracle we have these texts today, some four millennia after many of them were first conceived of in an ancient desert land! The story of the re-discovery in the nineteenth-century, after the last known copies were believed destroyed in Alexandria, is the recounting of an archeological miracle, and the fact that they survived the circumstances of their discovery at all amid corruption and mistrust in the black markets of Cairo is even more amazing.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is both a how-to tome for making the journey from the physical world to the eternal lands, and also an invaluable record of the belief system and psychology of a remarkable ancient people. Unlike the Tibetan Book of the Dead with its (apparent) universal application, the information in its far-older Egyptian counterpart is peculiar to the culture of Pharonic times. A highly devout, ritual-embracing, death-oriented civilization, ancient Egyptians were instructed via this information in the use of proper spells, attitudes, and the location of the paths to take as they faced the arduous and daunting trek from their burial sites to the "Land of Reeds" an unending paradise in the world beyond.

Unlike most cosmologies, the ancients of the Nile valley did not view the arrival after death at a final destination as an automatic event. They held that it was but the start of a long process, a too-often failed journey undertaken toward an end-point of a spectacular judgment that determined the worthiness of their souls. Egyptian religion taught that all human beings initially survived death, but that only those of purity and worth (and those educated in the lore of the Book of the Dead) would in fact enjoy long-term postmortem consciousness. Hell to Egyptians was an ending, not an ongoing torment. The fate of the `damned' was the cessation of being, and it was arrived at in the form of being devoured by a frightening creature that was part hippopotamus and part crocodile.

After making the arduous journey from tomb to place of judgment, the pilgrim on the voyage toward eternity, having passed a series of tests, arrived at a last evaluation. In the presence of the great jackal-headed god Anubis, the deceased would hand over to a goddess a sacred heart-stone he had carried with him on his journey from the tomb, and this heart-stone would be weighed on a scale against a single white feather. If the stone outweighed the feather, then the person in question would be ripped to pieces by the hippo-croc monster, and cease to be (ultimate horror to ancients) but if the stone was found to balance out equal to the feather, as the heart-stone of a righteous soul would, then that person passed on into a the Land of Reeds, where eternal bliss awaited.

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is translated in such a way that its already ancient phrases, incantations, and prayers sound deliberately archaic in a sort of King James Bible fashion, and it is not a downstream type of read. For those who persevere to the work's conclusion, though, the experience of reading these sacred texts, which by all rights should long ago have been lost to knowledge, will find the scholarly experience to be rewarding. Plus, if we happen to one day find ourselves in the Egyptian afterlife, we'll know what to do, right?

This is book is a wonderful piece to just look at. The plates of the papyri are gorgeous and are able to hold one in an almost trancelike state just looking into them. However, the texts of the papyri are not easily understood. So, this book is also amazingly helpful by the way it is put together for those of us who are non-specialists.

The book beings with a foreword, preface, and an introduction. The bulk of the book consists of thirty-seven beautiful plates of the papyri with a translation in English below. According to the other text in the book, this translation by Raymond Faulkner has many qualities that make it superior to any previous English version. Pages 94-97 provide thumbnail black and white versions of each text of papyri as a key to how to read them and other features.

Pages 101-135 contain chapters of the Theban Recension of "The Book of Going Forth by Day" that do not appear in the Ani Papyri that are the subject of this book. I suspect that this will be of more interest to those who are well versed in this subject than the general reader.

The next section is where I recommend any reader not already familiar with the context of this book in Egyptian culture begin their reading. It runs from page 139-154. The remainder of the book provides extra information about each plate and is also quite useful, but the reader should be already familiar with each plate in order for this material to be of most value.

A valuable and rich resource that is also very beautiful. What a bonus!