Book of the Dead papyri continued to be produced during this time as well, and three of our papyri are Ptolemaic in date. Our group of mummy bandages belongs to the Ptolemaic Period, around 305–30 BC, when Egypt was under the rule of the Greek successor dynasty that followed Alexander the Great’s conquest. One way in which this evolving relationship manifested was in the use of Book of the Dead spells on strips of linen that were laid over the mummy, putting the spells in direct physical contact with the deceased. Over time, we can see how people’s relationship to the Book of the Dead became more personal. This ushabti is one of 336 that were excavated from the tomb of a man named Neferibresaneith at Saqqara, Egypt. Once alive, they could perform labor on behalf of the deceased. These mummiform figurines were animated in the afterlife by reciting the spell (Spell 6) inscribed on their bodies. We are hopeful that by examining our own collection, we can better understand why particular spells were popular in different time periods.Īlso from the Third Intermediate Period is a recently acquired faience ushabti. Despite changes in the socio-political landscape in Egypt, traditional funerary practices, including the Book of the Dead, endured. Three papyri come from a later period called the Third Intermediate Period, around 1069–664 BC, a time of political instability that included rule by foreign dynasties of Nubians and Persians. These mounds are illustrated at the far right of the scroll. The papyrus, which belonged to a woman named Ra-webenes, includes Spell 149, in which the deceased encounters 14 “mounds” in the afterlife, each of which has its own inhabitants. The earliest text we own is an 18th Dynasty papyrus that was made sometime around 1450–1380 BC, during the height of Egypt’s New Kingdom. Getty’s collection spans a wide timeframe, which provides an exciting opportunity to examine how the Book of the Dead evolved for more than 1,000 years, and how it was used by the Egyptians. Vignettes often illustrated key points in the text, as in the example from Spell 125 illustrated above, in which the deceased has his heart weighed in the presence of Osiris. By the New Kingdom, around 1550–1069 BC, scribes started writing Book of the Dead spells on papyrus scrolls. The group that we call the Book of the Dead developed from spells that were first inscribed on scarabs and coffins at the end of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period, around 1650 BC.
Texts could be written either in hieroglyphic Egyptian or in a cursive form of the script called hieratic. Along with Getty’s ongoing provenance research, Scalf is studying the texts and preparing translations and analysis in order to place them within the broader context of the long history of the Book of the Dead.īook of the Dead spells were meant to be spoken aloud, and placing them on items in the tomb allowed the mummy to recite them from within his coffin.
Getty’s Book of the Dead manuscripts include seven papyri and 12 linen mummy wrappings that are now undergoing new scholarship spearheaded by Foy Scalf, an Egyptologist who is the head of research archives at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Spell 125 (a vignette from which is illustrated below), for example, lists a number of sins they must deny having committed in life when they appear before Osiris. They provided instructions for the various challenges the deceased would face on their journey. Rather, spells were inscribed on objects from mummy wrappings to coffins to figurines meant to accompany the dead in the tomb. There are nearly 200 known spells, but they weren’t collected into books in our current sense of the word.
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