The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Penguin Classics)

by E.A. Wallis Budge

For, besides the mistakes due to the carelessness and ignorance, and to the fatigue of the eye and the hand of the copyist, there remain to be considered the additions and interpolations which are always made by the scribe who wishes the text he is copying to represent his own views.

It was such tendencies as these on the part of scribes and copyists which made it necessary for Talmudic sages to resort to the means of “casuistic exegesis” for the preservation not of the original text of the Hebrew Bible but even of that text which had become authoritative in their time;

and it is a well known fact that, within a few years after the death of Muhammad the Prophet the notables of the Muhammadan world were alarmed at the variations which had already crept into the Suras of the Kur’ân, and that one of them warned1 his master to “stop the people, before th...

In this case the variant readings of a national religious book, which was held to be of divine origin, were disposed of in a most effectual manner, for, as soon as the four authorities who had been appointed to make a final recension of the Arabic text began work, they collected copies of the Kur’ân from all parts of the Muhammadan dominions, and having decided what r...

The graves of the pre-dynastic dweliers in Egypt contain no religious inscriptions, and it is not until we come to the time of the dynastic Egyptians that the tombs afford much evidence of the existence of the Book of the Dead;

it is, however, certain that parts of the Book of the Dead were in general use before the period of the rule of the kings of the 1st Dynasty.

The numerous tombs of priestly officials, and the inscriptions in them, testify that the men for whom they were made performed during their lifetime offices in connexion with the burial of the dead, such as the reading of texts and the performance of ceremonies, which we know from the rubrics of the recensions of the Book of...

now if the official lived and read the texts and performed the ceremonies of the Book of the Dead, that work must certainly have existed in one form or another, for priests were not app...

The Egyptians themselves have not left behind any very definite statement as to their belief about the existence of the Book of the Dead in pre-dynastic times, but they had no hesitation in asserting that certain parts of it were as ...

The oldest copy of the Book of the Dead now known to exist on papyrus is that which was written for Nu, the son of “the overseer of the house of the overseer of the seal, Åmen-hetep, and of the lady of the house, Senseneb;” this extremely valuable document...

Of the Sixty-fourth Chapter it gives two versions, one much longer than the other, and to each version is appended a rubric which assigns a date to the text which it follows;

the rubric of the shorter version declares that the “Chapter was found in the “foundations of the shrine of Hennu by the chief “mason during the reign of his Majesty, the king of “the South and North, Semti” (or, Hesepti), and that of the longer version that it” was found in the city of “Khemennu (Hermopolis, the city of Thoth) upon a “block of iron of the south, which had been inlaid [with “letters] of real lapis-lazuli, under the feet of the god “(i.e. Thoth) during the reign of his Majesty, the king “of the South and North, Men-kau-RĀ (i.e. Mycerinus), “by the royal son Heru-tā-tā-f.”

Here then we have two statements, one of which ascribes the “finding” of the Chapter to the time of the 1st Dynasty, and the other to the IVth Dynasty; and it is probable that both statements are correct, for it is clear that the longer version, which is ascribed to the IVth Dynasty, is much longer than that which is ascribed to the 1st Dyna...

Of the history of the Book of the Dead during the IInd, IIIrd, and IVth Dynasties we know nothing, and no copy of any part of the Recension of it then in use has come down to

During the period of the Vth and VIth Dynasties a great development took place in the funeral ceremonies that were performed for Egyptian Kings, and Unås, Tetå, Pepi I., and others covered the greater part of the chambers, corridors, etc, of their pyramid tombs with series of texts selected from