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Welcome to Voices of Ancient Egypt, the podcast for people who don't just want to learn about ancient Egypt, but want to understand it on a deeper, more meaningful level. I'm Melinda Nelsonhurst, an Egyptologist with a PhD in the field and years of experience teaching at the university level, working in Egypt, and training students around the world to read real ancient Egyptian texts. I've spent decades studying the civilization in a traditional academic setting, so you don't have to. And so you can access knowledge that's usually locked behind academic walls. This podcast brings ancient Egyptian history, beliefs, and language to life and shows you that learning hieroglyphs is possible no matter your age, background, or schedule. So whether you want to read hieroglyphs in museums, on social media, or on your next trip to Egypt, you'll find the tools, stories, and encouragement to make it real right here. Let's hear the voices of the ancient world together. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Voices of Ancient Egypt podcast. Excited to bring this one to you today, which is a topic I think a lot of people have heard of, certainly, and many are really fascinated with. But I want to start by taking a step back here for a minute and thinking about maybe something you've seen in the movies before. Maybe you saw the 1999 version of The Mummy or something with a similar scene like this. In the movie, there's a book that they call the Book of the Dead, and Evelyn decides that she's going to take it and open it and read some of the texts inside because she's curious about what it says and she wants to be able to read it. She's an Egyptologist and she's going to read it. And then she reads it aloud. And of course, this is what wakes up the quote-unquote mummy main character in the movie, who then wreaks all kinds of havoc, right, throughout the movie. And maybe you've seen this particular movie, maybe you've seen other ones like it. This is certainly not unique to this movie in terms of their portrayal of ancient Egyptian texts and particularly the book of the dead. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about today is the Book of the Dead. And I bring up this scene, I always show this scene to my students actually before we have this discussion, because I think it kind of encapsulates a lot of the misconceptions about the Book of the Dead, all in a little two-minute clip. And you know, first of all, you have some maybe a little bit more mundane sounding ones. Like, for example, they didn't have bound books in ancient Egypt. Bound books in ancient Egypt didn't come around until the second century of our era, and they still didn't become common for quite a while after that. So when we're talking about pharaonic Egypt, the 3,000 years or so before that, no bound books. So definitely didn't look anything like the one in the movie, which is a bound book, also with an incredibly clunky cover to it. And there was nothing like that in ancient Egypt. And, you know, then you could get into all other kinds of ideas too, of like thinking of it as a set book. The so-called Book of the Dead, that's a modern term for it. And it really wasn't anything like what we would call a book today. There's so many things that are different about it. First of all, it's not a set composition. When we think of a book, like if you go out and you buy the first Harry Potter novel, for example, you expect it to say the exact same thing inside as your friend's copy, right? You don't want it to be a totally different mix of chapters and different things happen in the book and so on and so forth. But the book of the dead is exactly like that. No two copies are exactly alike. And in fact, they vary quite a lot. Some people only have a few parts to them that we call spells. They might have a few spells. Some people have really big copies of the Book of the Dead that have many spells in them, and they'll often be overlap between these, like one person's may have, you know, spell 17 and 34 or something, and somebody else's may also have those two as well as others. But no two are exactly alike with the exact same selection of spells and in the exact same order. And then of course, there's maybe I don't know if this is more or less obvious sort of part here, but the fact that in the movie, the book, when you read it aloud, awakens a cursed person who basically was killed but not allowed to go to the afterlife. And so it sort of brings him in a way back to life on Earth. And this is absolutely not what what we call the Book of the Dead was for. And I'll get to actually what the ancient Egyptians called it and used it for in a moment. But this text was meant to help you get to the afterlife, not keep you alive and moving and stuck in the living world, right? This was to allow you to get to the afterlife and be able to travel around. And in fact, travel is a huge theme in it. And the ancient Egyptians, for that reason, they called it the book, or actually really the scroll, of going out by day, or sometimes they refer to it as the spells for going out by day. And this term referred to what we call the Book of the Dead, but it also was just sort of a general term for similar texts, also. It's not really a strict name just for this composition, or I should say, collection of compositions. But the reason it was called this is that one of the main focuss in this text, and this is a focus to some extent also in the text that led up to it. So you might have heard of, for example, the pyramid texts and the coffin texts, which really actually are not totally separate texts from the Book of the Dead, but really these are basically a continuum or like an evolution over time of these kinds of texts that were used. And so really it's just about how they change over time rather than being completely distinct groups of texts. And this is something that I talked about in a video I actually just recorded for my program Master Scribes, all about the Book of the Dead and the texts that came before it and led up to it and how those evolve and what they were really for, how they were used, how they were made, and a lot of misconceptions about all of them, including things like the pyramid texts, which you'll often hear were really just for royals, for example, and we talk about why that's probably not the case. And this is just one of the many things that's in the program in Master Scribes. This is my sixth month next level program for learning hieroglyphs that includes all the curriculum you need to learn everything from the very basics up through more advanced texts like reading The Book of the Dead. And we have read multiple spells from the Book of the Dead in the program. And I felt it was time to add a lesson specifically on the Book of the Dead as an overview in general and what it even is, not necessarily just reading parts of it, but learning about it in greater depth and having that context for when we do read the spells. And this is something I do periodically when I see a need for an additional class or workshop, I add them in. I'm always adding to the curriculum in the program. And applications for Master Scribes will be opening up very soon. So you'll want to grab a spot on the wait list at masterscribes.com. So when I did that class, I thought, you know what, this is also a great thing to share with you all on the podcast. So here is a podcast shortened version of that class. If you want to hear the full one and also learn how to read these texts for yourself, definitely check out Masterscribes at masterscribes.com. And I look forward to seeing your application when they open. So back to the Book of the Dead in general. It was meant for, as I started to say, as well as the texts before it were meant for, helping a person transform into what the ancient Egyptians called an ach. This was the effective spirit of a person that did not come into being until after death and after certain rituals were performed and they actually were able to make it to the afterlife. So there are many parts of the person. I'm not going to go through all of them today because that could be kind of lengthy. That could be its own episode. But there are probably ones you heard of, like the Ba, for example, which is sort of like a mobile spirit. It's pictured as a bird with a human head, or the ka, which looks like the person and is there from even from before birth and all throughout a person's life. But the awk, unlike those, comes about later. It is not something that already exists when you're living. And it's sort of god-like. It doesn't mean the person necessarily is considered a god when they transform into an awk, but they have many of the abilities of the gods. They can travel around, they can live amongst the god, they can influence life on earth. And in fact, ak in Egyptian means effective. And this is no coincidence. This is exactly why this part of the person is called this, because they can cause things to happen. They can affect things. And so this is your main reason for these texts, and then for the earlier ones as well, like the pyramid texts and coffin texts. And these texts go about it in multiple ways. So I mentioned how there's all these different parts of the Book of the Dead, what we call spells, because they really are meant to be recited and used in a ritualistic kind of way. So you could call it a ritual or a spell, something like that. We might not have an exact match in English really to fit this really well. But something like that, like spell or ritual, works. Some people say chapters, so you might hear that, but uh the issue with that is again makes it sound like it's a set book when you have chapters, right? So I prefer to say spell or ritual. And some parts of the Book of the Dead are very similar to those earlier ones, and then some really deviate from this and create their new things. Now, you might have seen copies of the Book of the Dead in museums, and you probably saw them on papyrus, and so you think of it as this papyrus kind of scroll composition. But actually, Book of the Dead spells can occur on so many different objects. They could appear on papyri, of course, but they could also be on shrouds that cover mummies, or individual sort of narrower bands of linen that cover mummies, on leather, on amulets of various types, shabti figurines that you may have seen, the little servant figurines that you've seen in museums, coffins, masks, stele, magic bricks, other kinds of figurines, tomb walls, and also actually in temple contexts, we find Book of the Dead evidence too. And this is because the Book of the Dead was not used just by the dead, which that is of course a modern term. I'm gonna continue to use it because it's what people know this text by, but we know of course it's not what the ancient Egyptians called it. But this text was to help the dead, certainly, much of it, and some of it was to be used specifically by the deceased person to make it through the afterlife, to transform into different forms and things like that, to know the knowledge they needed to address certain gods and judges that they needed to talk to to get a favorable judgment and get into the afterlife, for example, or to be able to pass through certain doorways. They needed to know the names of different things, like doorways, fairymen, etc. So some of these spells are for that purpose. But many of the spells were actually meant to be used by the living. So they could be used in a variety of ways by the living. Sometimes they might be used by the living specifically to help the deceased. And this could be during embalming, for example, when preparing amulets that were going to be fit into the wrappings when somebody was being wrapped up after mummification. It could be for other aspects of things that they would say while preparing the body. There's a spell specifically for the mummy mask that was said while the mask was put on. And in fact, this spell 151A occurs on Tutankhamun's famous gold mask on the back. Maybe if you've seen the mask before in Cairo, you might have seen this text. Although, honestly, even if you've seen the mask, you might have missed it because it is on the back. And this is just one of the spells we've actually read in Master Scribes. And it's a really fun one because it's such an iconic piece and really to get to understand what it says on there. And it's an actually a mythological allusion to when the sun god Ray helped Osiris by giving him a mask to help put him back together after he was injured. And so this was repeated. This was something that was said when the mask was put on the individual before burial. So you have a variety of spells like that, spells for creating heart scarabs. Heart scarabs, also something we read in Master Scribes, by the way. And these were amulets that were meant to keep your heart from testifying against you during judgment. But these spells also include sometimes the instructions for the living to create these amulets as well, along with the text that was supposed to go on the amulet itself. So there's a variety of things like this that are used before the funeral, during the funeral, and also after the funeral to continue to help the person in the afterlife and help them live on in the afterlife and be prosperous. And all of this was done, of course, to help the person get to the afterlife, become an Ach, and to be able to continue to be mobile via their Ba. I mentioned the Ba before as that sort of mobile spirit. So for example, Book of the Dead, spell 15B, it has a good example in one section of what these were for. It says, As for any Ach spirit for whom this book is made, his Ba spirit goes forth with the living. It goes forth by day. It is mighty among the gods. And this particular quote really encompasses the entire purpose for these spells that were used by the dead and for the dead by the living. But one really interesting thing about this is that these texts were not only reserved for the area of life that we think of as really death, actually, and making it to the afterlife. They were actually also sometimes used in temple contexts, so for the gods. So we see this with certain spells, especially ones that relate to Osiris in some kind of way. So they were particularly commonly used in the Osiris cult. When I say cult, I mean the rituals done in temples for the god. And so these were also found oftentimes in temple contexts. So for example, there's spell 134 that says you're supposed to say it over a picture of a falcon and a bunch of other gods who are shown in a sacred boat drawn on a bowl. And we see this illustrated in Book of the Dead Papyri, actually, and one that I am looking at right now actually shows this little scene, this little vignette, as actually a boat with then a circular object in it. So basically the bowl, with the pictures of the gods uh inside that circle. So interestingly reinterpreted onto papyrus what's actually meant to be a picture of the gods in the boat on a bowl, rather than the gods on a bowl in a boat, which is how it shows up on the papyrus. And we actually have versions of this bowl, this exact description it fits, that show up in temple contexts. So we know that spells like this were also used in these temple contexts and not just for the dead. So perhaps a further bit of showing why Book of the Dead is maybe not the most fitting title that we could give this text, of course. And interestingly, spell 125, which is perhaps the most famous one, this is the one that has what's often called today the negative confession in it. And this is a text we are reading in Master Scribes as well, by the way. We've been reading 125 and the negative confession. This particular text, which is also one where you sometimes see that scene, that vignette of the weighing of the heart that is so commonly depicted on books and you see it in museums and so forth. This particular spell, while it does clearly relate to judgment after death, also has some really strong undertones of being related to the initiation rituals for people becoming priests or potentially priestesses in the temples. There's various things that they talk about in terms of becoming pure enough, clean enough to enter the sacred space and all these things that you do. And in fact, in a particular Book of the Dead from the 18th dynasty, belonging to Nefer Webenef, he's actually shown entering before the 42 gods who will judge him as a man with shoulder-length hair and wearing fancy clothes and stuff. And then when he exits in the next scene, he exits looking like a priest with a shaven head and dressed in simple linen garments like a priest. So he's shown essentially going through this process of like becoming a priest and becoming in this purified state where you are allowed to approach the gods in a temple. So they treat this in this spell the same way, implying that this really is a tremendous amount of overlap, if not necessarily maybe actual literal use of this in that context as well. Now, in terms of what we know about who owned these and how they were made, interestingly, in most periods, so the Book of the Dead starts coming about what we call the Book of the Dead. Again, it's a continuum, so it kind of evolves out of earlier texts, but the earliest ones that we would identify as being this sort of group of texts come from the second intermediate period. But of course, it's most largely known from the New Kingdom and later. So if you've seen some famous papyri like the papyrus of Ani, for example, that is from the New Kingdom. And in most time periods, the majority of papyri with Book of the Dead spells on them belonged to men. But in the third intermediate period, so this is a different intermediate period, this is the one that comes after the New Kingdom. Interestingly, actually a larger number were owned by women than by men. So we have a temporary sort of shift in that direction. And when it comes to how they were made, we don't know the exact order or processes because they actually seem to have varied this somewhat. So sometimes they seem to have written text on things first and then added the pictures afterwards, and then in other cases they added the pictures first and added the text afterwards. And we know this because we have some incomplete copies, some of which have text on them, but not all the pictures are there, and they left some blank, and then some that are the reverse. They have all the pictures, but they don't have all the text yet, and they left them unfinished like that. So clearly they didn't have a standardized process, and maybe it was different with each artist and or scribe who did the textual part, or maybe it varied by workshop where they worked together, maybe they had a particular process in each workshop. One thing we do know is they did the main outlines for all the scenes in the text first. Those were definitely always there before you had anything else, and then that this process could vary from there. And these could be on, of course, a variety of objects, but when it comes to papyrus, they had oftentimes, if it was a large book of the dead with lots of spells in it, they would need many sheets of papyrus, and so they would have to stick those together to make one long scroll. And interestingly, a lot of the time they do this before they inscribe the papyrus. So they stick it all together, the length they want and everything. But sometimes, like in the case of Ani, who I mentioned a minute ago, who has that huge Book of the Dead in the British Museum, his seems to have been actually made in sections and then put together after it was already inscribed and decorated. So it's a fascinating world of all this variation in it. And sometimes you can see evidence even of Books of the Dead being made perhaps before a person even said they wanted one because their name was added in later on in a different handwriting. And sometimes they even left a blank space for the name and forgot to fill it in in some parts. They filled it in in some places and not others. So we know that sometimes at least these were made ahead of time. And it gives us this fascinating glimpse into ancient Egyptian belief in terms of how they used these, why they wanted them, and also sort of how they were made and what their priorities were as far as that went. And if you want to read texts like these, like The Book of the Dead on Hard Scarabs, Tutankhamun's Mask, The Negative Confession, and others as well, I would encourage you to apply for Master Scribes, which is my next level hieroglyphs program that teaches you to read everything from the basics to temple walls, to historical documents, to literary stories, to letters and medical texts and the Book of the Dead. And applications as of this recording will be opening very soon. So you'll want to grab your spot on the wait list at masterscribes.com. Until next time, stay curious.