Instead of reading the actual Egyptian Book Of The Dead I read a book that went through the spells and also explained them and their place in Egyptian communities. It describes itself as a Master's course to the book. I will go through and explain what I learned reading the book, which is not necessarily all from the Book of the Dead.
The author compares the Book of the Dead to the representation of the book in the movie The Mummy. In The Mummy the Book is used to bring the dead back to life. This is inaccurate. The Book, whose translated name is actually "Coming Forth By Day", is to guide and protect the dead through what they call the Otherworld. The Otherworld is the place that the sun god Ra travels through during the night. It is rife with dangers. The spells in the Egyptian Book of the Dead were written by many authors throughout the entire run of the ancient Egyptian community. In the Old Kingdom, the earliest segment of time in the Egyptian time, the spells weren't collected into a book - most of what we know comes from segments written on walls and coffins (referred to as coffin-texts). Most of the book was written and collected during the New Kingdom. It was written on scrolls and sold in stores for about the price of a bed. More elaborately illustrated Books were sold for more money to the richer community members. Some of the spells call for stylized and "fantasy" creations, which aren't to be found in the tombs that archaeologists have discovered. An example would be spell 137A:
"To be spoken over four torches of red linen smeared with the best quality Libyan oil in the hands of four men on whose arms are inscribed the names of the children of Horus..."
and spell 133 which calls for a 'sacred barque of four cubits made of pieces of Malachite..." Four cubits is two meters, and this was unlikely for a normal income family to be able to afford. So, not all of the spells were followed to the letter.
The Otherworld was said to be filled with mounds and caverns, but as the Egyptians were by and large a pre-cartographic society no map of the Otherworld is to be found. Egypt was largely ruled by scribes at this time, some of whom wrote spells for the Book, who ruled for the Kings and Pharaohs.
I'd like to talk about the relationship between the Egyptians and their God/s and Goddess/es and how it compares to Christianity. The author makes this comparison often in the book. The first thing about the Egyptian God/s is that they were actually all fragments of the same God. In the book the author says that this differs from Christianity and western religions, but it reminds me a little of the Holy Trinity in Christianity - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are distinct characters but all fragments of the same God. There are many more fragments in the ancient Egyptian religion and there are many more differences. Where faith is important in Western religions, in the ancient Egyptian religion acts were more important. When the soul was judged, in the often portrayed weighing against a feather, the actions of the soul were what lifted or dropped it not faith in the God/s. Faith was taken as a given and rarely thought about in ancient Egypt. Another interesting difference is that there was no concept of hell in ancient Egypt. If your soul was found lacking, or heavier than the feather, you would be eaten immediately by a waiting monster.
In the Book, it appears that there is a separate Otherworld for each person. There are no endpoints to the Otherworld except if your soul was found lacking. Many of the spells project the reader into a central position of authority - in fact replacing the God/s themselves in many cases (or more accurately, becoming the God/s). Ancient Egyptians believed in God/s much differently than Western religions because they imagined divinity to be present in all living things. So when they entered their personal Otherworld, they became Ra the sun god, who progressed through the Otherworld every night. In another spell, 79, they become the head of the tribunal of judgment of souls (although this didn't affect the judgment of their own soul), Atom, "Lord of All. Becoming a God did not mean that the reader could escape the judgment of his own soul nor did it mean he could act against the good of the living community. While he had the power of the God/s, he also had the serious responsibility.
Being a God also didn't protect the reader from the evil things that existed in the Otherworld. In fact it brought more enemies - the enemies of the reader and the God he or she became were now both after him/her. Many spells including 17 and 179 were for the protection of the reader from the evil that awaited them:
"Oh Kehpri, in the midst of your sacred Barque, primeval one whose body is eternity, save me from those who are in charge of those who are to be examined, to whom the Lord of All has given power to guard against his enemies, who put knives into the slaughter-houses, who do not leave their guardianship, their knives shall not cut into me, I shall not enter their slaughter-houses, I shall not sit down on their fish-traps, no harm shall be done to me from whom the gods detest.." Spell 17
Knives are a common fear for ancient Egyptians, which we can tell from their reoccurring mention in the spells. This is probably because a common punishment for live ancient Egyptians was having part of your face cut off - mainly the nose or the ears.
The spells cast the god/s in an interesting light. Instead of doing bodily harm when angered like the Gods of many other religions, the ancient Egyptian gods were more of bureaucrats, forming committees and writing angry letters to each other. I found that especially amusing. In the spells it seems as if the reader doesn't take them seriously. There are even spells to hide or obfuscate the wrong doings of the reader's soul from the god/s when their soul is weighed.
The final point I took from the book explained why bodies were mummified. It was because the Egyptians were terrified of the rot of death. There are several spells (89 and 122 among some of them) that tell how a body should be prepared.
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