The Egyptian Book of the Dead is the modern name for a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary texts. The Egyptians called it the Book of Coming Forth by Day. It is not a single book by one author but a body of spells, hymns, and instructions copied onto papyrus and tomb walls over roughly a thousand years, from about 1550 BCE into the Greco-Roman period. The spells were placed with the dead to help them pass through the Duat, the underworld, and reach the afterlife. Different copies contain different selections of spells, so no two versions are identical.
This edition presents the translation by E. A. Wallis Budge, an English Egyptologist who worked at the British Museum. His version, first published in 1895 and based largely on the Papyrus of Ani, made the text widely available to English readers and remains the most reprinted English edition. Among the best-known sections is the scene in which the heart of the dead is weighed against the feather of Maat, accompanied by a list of denials of wrongdoing often called the Negative Confession. Later scholarship has produced more accurate translations, but Budge's edition is still the version most readers first encounter.
Reception
The Book of the Dead is one of the most studied bodies of ancient Egyptian writing and a central source for what is known about Egyptian beliefs about death and the afterlife. E. A. Wallis Budge's translation was influential because it was affordable and widely distributed, and it shaped popular images of ancient Egypt for much of the twentieth century. Egyptologists today treat Budge's work with caution: his transliterations and some of his interpretations are considered outdated, and later translators such as Raymond Faulkner are generally preferred for scholarly use. The text is not a unified narrative, which can make a first reading difficult, and modern editions vary widely in which spells they include and how they arrange them.
Frequently asked
What is The Egyptian Book of the Dead?
It is a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary spells, hymns, and instructions, written on papyrus and tomb walls and buried with the dead to help them reach the afterlife. The Egyptians called it the Book of Coming Forth by Day. It was compiled over about a thousand years and has no single author.
Who was E. A. Wallis Budge?
He was a British Egyptologist (1857-1934) who worked at the British Museum. His 1895 English translation, based mainly on the Papyrus of Ani, is the version reprinted in this edition and the one most English readers know, though later scholars have produced more accurate translations.
What is the weighing of the heart?
It is one of the best-known scenes in the text. The heart of the dead person is weighed on a scale against the feather of Maat, the principle of truth and order. The scene is tied to a series of statements in which the dead deny having committed specific wrongs, often called the Negative Confession.