February 27, 1902] 



NA TURE 



3^7 



THE BOOK OF THE DEAD. 

 The Book of the Dead : an English Tra/islaiion of /he 

 Chapters, Hymns, &^c., of the Theban Recension, with 

 Introduction, Notes, ^c, and with Four Hundred 

 and Twenty Vignettes. By E. A. Wallis Budge, M,A. 

 Litt.D., D.Lit. In three volumes. Pp. .\cvi + viii + 

 tii + 702. Vols, vi.-viii. of the series " Books on 

 Egypt and Chaldiea." (London : Kegan Paul and 

 Co., Ltd., 1901.) 



READERS of N.\TURE will remember that nearly 

 three years ago we noticed the appearance of a 

 work, published by the trustees of the British Museum, 

 in which facsimiles were given of the Egyptian papyri of 

 Hunefer, .Xnhai, Kerasher and Netchemet, together with 

 the text of the papyrus of Nu, the whole work being 

 edited and annotated or translated by Dr. Wallis Budge, 

 the keeper of our national collection of Oriental antiquities. 

 As we pointed out at the time, this monumental work 

 completed the series of facsimiles of papyri of the " Book 

 of the Dead," which the trustees of the Museum have 

 published at intervals during the last eighteen years, and 

 by its appearance furnished scholars with a remarkable 

 series of papyri of all periods for the study of the funereal 

 literature of the ancient Egyptians. The great amount 

 of new material published in this series of volumes ren- 

 dered still more apparent the want of a complete edition 

 of the text of the " Book of the Dead," which has been 

 increasingly felt since the appearance in 1886 of M. 

 Naville's " Das Todtenbuch der .Egypter," in which were 

 given the various chapters from the different papyri then 

 available. 



The want was supplied by Dr. Budge, who, under the 

 title " Chapters of Coming Forth by Day," published a 

 complete edition of the text, based upon all known papyri, 

 together with a translation and a full vocabulary to the 

 hieroglyphic texts. This bulky work in three volumes 

 appealed in the main to scholars, while its price placed it 

 beyond the reach of many whose interest in the " Book 

 of the Dead " stopped short of the acquisition of its com- 

 plete hieroglyphic text. It was in answer to numerous 

 requests from this latter class of readers, as we learn from 

 the preface to the volumes before us, that the publishers 

 decided to include Dr. Budge's English translation in their 

 series of little " Books on Egypt and Chalda;a." The 

 books under review, however, contain no mere reprint of 

 a portion of the former work. Careful revision, based on 

 a comparison of the original documents, constitutes the 

 translation a new edition of the English rendering ; and 

 while from the introduction the general reader may gain 

 a knowledge of the history, object and contents of the 

 " Book of the Dead," he need not be puzzled by obscure 

 references or phrases in the translation if he consults the 

 many explanatory notes which have been added to this 

 edition. We shall in the main confine ourselves to the 

 new material thus presented, and shall refer in some 

 detail to the remarkable series of vignettes here published 

 for the first time ; before doing so, however, it will be 

 necessary to sketch briefly the nature of the religious texts 

 which are here translated. 



The title " Book of the Dead " is now almost a house- 

 hold word, and it is never likely to be changed either for 

 the Egyptian title " Chapters of Coming Forth by Day," 

 NO. 1687, VOL. 65] 



or for any conventional description of its contents. That 

 it is unsatisfactory Dr. Budge admits, for the " Book of 

 the Dead " is not a book in the strict sense, that is to say, 

 it is not a fi.ved composition the different copies of which 

 vary but slightly. But the title is short, it is sanctioned 

 by the authority of ChampoUion and Lepsius, and the 

 texts so described certainly concern the dead ; moreover, 

 it is far preferable to the titles " Ritual of the Dead " and 

 " Funeral Ritual," which have been suggested as substi- 

 tutes. The great body of Egyptian religious texts which 

 bear this title have a long and varied history ; with their 

 origin buried in the remote past, they grew by accretion 

 throughout the whole life of the Egyptian nation, and 

 their contents reflect the beliefs and opinions of many 

 different and conflicting schools of thought. But, as 

 Dr. Budge points out, every chapter or section that has 

 yet been recovered has a link which connects it with the 

 rest ; however barbarous or however exalted may be the 

 character of the beliefs a chapter embodies, it shares a 

 common object with the others — that of benefiting in 

 some way the deceased. And it is this common object 

 which constitutes the claim of the " Book of the Dead" 

 to be the great national religious composition of ancient 

 Egypt. In what way its chapters were to benefit the 

 deceased may best be described in Dr. Budge's own 

 summary : — 



"They were intended to give him the power to have 

 and to enjoy life everlasting, to give him everything he 

 required in the life beyond the grave, to ensure his 

 victory over his foes, to procure for him the power of 

 going whithersoever he pleased and when and how he 

 pleased, to preserve the mummy intact, and finally to 

 enable his soul to enter into the bark of Ra or into 

 whatever abode of the blessed had been conceived of by 

 him." 



The recently discovered graves of some of the in- 

 digenous inhabitants of Egypt show that two distinct 

 methods of burial were practised at that early period, and 

 probably by two distinct peoples. By the one the dead 

 were partially burnt, and afterwards the skull and bones 

 were placed in a shallow pit ; by the other the body was 

 buried either whole or after it had been dismembered. 

 Both peoples oriented the dead in the same direction 

 and both made ofterings to the dead. It is clear, there- 

 fore, that both peoples had a clear perception of a future 

 life, while the traces of bitumen discovered by Dr. 

 Fouquet upon some of the buried bodies suggest that 

 these early inhabitants of Egypt, like their later de- 

 scendants, believed that the welfare of the deceased 

 depended upon the preservation of their earthly remains. 

 Although no inscriptions have been found in these early 

 graves, there is much that lends colour to Dr. Budge's 

 suggestion that the origin of the " Book of the Dead " 

 may be traced to the prayers and formulae recited during 

 burial at this early period in order to preserve the dead 

 body from the attacks of wild animals and from decay. 

 The earliest written version of the " Book of the Dead " 

 occurs upon the walls of the chambers and passages in 

 the pyramids of the kings of the fifth and sixth dynasties 

 at Sakkara, and it does not, therefore, date from an earlier 

 period than B.C. 3500 ; but the mistakes and misunder- 

 standings of the scribes who engraved these texts prove 

 that many of the formula- were even then unintelligible 



