46 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



plete text of the whole book. M. Naville confined his attention to 

 MSS. of the time of the XVIII-XX dynasties, and pubhshed ac- 

 cording to the canons of modern criticism, a text from papyri of 

 that period. After carefully studying 26 papyri of the British 

 Museum, 17 in Paris, 5 in Leyden, 5 in Berlin, and many kept in 

 other museums, as well as the inscriptions at Thebes, his work was 

 published in 1886. It contains 186 chapters, and costs about 

 ^12.0.0. 



A few months ago the trustees of the British Musuem published 

 mfac simile a papyrus of the Book of the Dead. I have pleasure to 

 submit it for the inspection of the Hamilton Association. It was 

 executed for an Egyptian named Ani, a scribe, and director of the 

 granaries of the Lords of Abydos. Like other copies, it does not 

 contain all the chapters, but is illustrated in a finer manner than most 

 other copies are, and the 175th chapter, it is said, has not before 

 been issued in so complete a form. Mr. le Page Renouf has written 

 an able introduction, and gives a full translation of many of the more 

 interesting passages. For reasons assigned at length by Mr. Renouf, 

 the date of the papyrus is referred to about the end of the fourteenth 

 century before Christ. No copy of the Book of the Dead is found 

 on any papyrus before the XVIII. dynasty, although, as has been 

 stated, sculptured passages are found at much earlier date. In the 

 vignettes Ani is accompanied by his wife Tutu. She is called a 

 kemait, a musician, or one who belongs to some chapter of a Temple. 

 In her right hand she carries the sistrum, or Egyptian lute, and in 

 her left hand she holds flowers with a symbol to propitiate the Gods. 



The aim of the Book of the Dead was to give might to the 

 departed and to aid him in the life after death, but it is hard to trace 

 whatever unity there may be between the chapters, and some of 

 them might be detached from the rest with as little detriment as a 

 hymn can be taken from the Vaidic books, or as one of the Psalms 

 can be read alone without impairment of its beauty. That it records 

 the belief of the Egyptians concerning the common lot after death, 

 reflecting a faith that with little change obtained for centuries, there 

 can be no doubt. The first scene shews Ani and his wife before a 

 table of offerings, and after an invocation to the sun comes the great 

 scene of the psychostasia, or weighing of the heart. There is nothing 

 in the papyrus grander and more impressive than this scene. The 

 heart is weighed against an ostrich feather, which symbolizes law, by 



