Gruesome rites? Book of the Dead Fragment.

I thought in this blog I would concentrate on what is going on in the illustrations to this piece of the Book of the Dead. And, if anyone has any comments please feel free to let us know. Part of the reason for my doing this blog is so I can learn (as well as letting you know about our collection).

First some background. This particular piece is Late Dynastic-Ptolemaic. It was sold to Henry Wellcome in Sotheby's sale of 1932 and is now catalogued in the Egypt Centre as W867. It is a papyrus sheet from the Book of the Dead. This particular piece depicts the hymn to the rising sun, Chapter 15 of the Book of the Dead. The scroll belonged to Ankh-Hapi, son of Pa-Khered-en-Min and Ta-di-Aset. Other pieces of the book are in the British Museum (EA9946) and two other pieces are known from elsewhere (Hurst 1997, 14-16). It has been published by Kate Bosse-Griffiths in ZAS 123 (1996) p97-102.

And now to the illustration along the top.

It shows a funeral ceremony in front of the tomb, a vignette which usually illustrates Chapter 1 in the New Kingdom but which by the Late Dynastic and Ptolemaic Period can be used to illustrate chapters 1-15. Anubis (or a priest wearing an Anubis mask) appears on this scene, together with the sacrifice of a bull, the implements used in the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, and an adze being used in the ceremony, etc. Anubis/priest with Anubis mask is shown propping up the coffin of the deceased in front of a lamenting woman and a priest who is purifying.

The mummy would be propped up in front of a stela in the courtyard of the tomb and exposed to the rays of the sun. It has been suggested that the setting up of the mummy ‘before Re’ took place at midday (Assmann 2005, 318; Taylor 2010, 88), though as this illustrates a hymn to the rising sun, perhaps the ceremony took place in the morning. The courtyard of the tomb would have been symbolically in the east. The practice of setting up the mummy in the courtyard to receive the rays of the sun, in front of stelae, probably with solar hymns thereon, gained popularity from the New Kingdom (Assmann 2005, 320). Re can be seen enthroned on the far left. The presentation of the mummy before Re mirrored the mythical judgement before the enthroned god which is shown, for example, on the coffin of Iwesemhesetmut in the Egypt Centre (in fact on this coffin it is shown twice, as a judgement by Osiris, and a judgement by Re). The pointed roof of the tomb which is shown in front of Re and his offering table actually went out of favour during the Ramesside Period, though would have been understood in later times as a tomb.

The figure holding up the mummy may be either mythically understood as Anubis, or as an actual priest in an Anubis mask. Anubis masks have been found, making the latter interpretation seem more likely. One is now held in Harrogate Museum (HARGM10686 02). Another is in the Roemer Pelizaeus- Museum, Hildesheim (1585). Additionally, at Dendera is a depiction of a procession of priests. One is shown wearing a mask (that it is a mask seems to be the case from the way it is shown as transparent, see Mariette IV, pl. 31).

The rite of placing the mummy in the sun, purifying it and performing the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony, is described in TT23 (Assmann 2005, 323–324). The Opening of the Mouth Ceremony ensured that the deceased was able to act after death.

To the right of the priest forming the opening of the mouth ritual is a priest wearing a headdress of two ostrich feathers. He is the lector priest. From the Third Intermediate Period the lector priest was sometimes shown with such a headdress and was thus sometimes called a ‘wing-wearer’ (Greek-pterophorus). Lector priests were responsible for chanting or reading from sacred texts and sometimes acted as oracles for the people.

To the far right is a dreadful scene, an essential part of the Opening of the Mouth ritual. A foreleg of a still living calf is chopped off, witnessed by its mourning mother. The leg is presented to the deceased while still warm (Assmann 2005, 324-329). Both the leg and the mourning cow were important in ensuring that the deceased was reborn. In some texts, it is suggested that the calf represents the god Seth who must be punished so that eternal life is possible.

References

Assmann, J. 2005. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Translated from the German by David Lorton. Ithica and London: Cornell University Press.

Hurst, N. A Passion for the past. Historic Collections from Egypt and the Levant. Cambridge (Mass,).

Mariette, A. 1871. Dendérah: description générale du grand temple de cette ville (Vol. 4): Plates, Paris.

Müller-Roth, M. and Weber, F. 2012. Pretty Good Privacy. In Lucarelli, R., Müller-Roth, M. and Wüthrich, A. Herausgehen am Tage. Gesammelte Schriften zum altägyptischen Totenbuch, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitx,  113-134.

Taylor, J.H. 2010 (ed.) Journey through the afterlife. Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. British Museum Press.

Daemons 'playing drums', mummy bandages and sky journeys

Very interested to read Rita Lucarelli's article yesterday. I'm certainly not an expert on the Book of the Dead, not indeed daemons, so advance apologies to Rita if I misinterpret her. Her paper can be seen by clicking here.

Basically, it is about mound 14 from the Book of the Dead Spell 149. This mound is one of several illustrated on copies of Book of the Dead Spell 149, and one through which the deceased had to travel in order to get to the afterworld. Rita compares demons from the Book of the Dead papyri with other daemons which appear to be very similar from elsewhere. She concludes that the daemons seem to be very similar to those describing the journey of the sun boat across the sky, a means by which the deceased shared in the sun god's daily rebirth and the annual Inundation of the Nile, another rebirth trope.

So, we haven't got a mound 14 on any of our Book of the Dead fragments, but we have got a fragment of mummy bandage showing Spell 149, and the first 5 mounds. That's it on the picture above. It shows 5 mounds, each with a daemon. The one second from the right looks like he is playing a drum! More about the fragment here.

I am wondering if  the other mounds in this Spell too, show any comparison with journeys across the sky? Certainly the Four Sons of Horus, which you can see on the far right of our papyrus, are associated with the Northern Sky, and rebirth. In Book of the Dead 17 the Four Sons of Horus are associated with the bull's leg in the sky (the ancient Egyptian constellation Msxtyw). The Northern Sky is, in its turn associated with the Inundation, the Imperishable ones, as well as the vigil of Osiris, all rejuvenating factors.

I understand Rita is writing up an article on the other daemons in Spell 149, when it's published expect another blog on this piece!

Your right eye is the Evening Boat

This rather beautiful but very damaged Ptolemaic mummy mask was put on display in the upstairs gallery in the Egypt Centre in 2009. We put it in our metalwork case to show that metal was not just about tools and weapons but also about religion. However, in the last couple of weeks a visiting researcher noticed that there might be something else interesting about it.

The mask is made of cartonnage, that is linen and gesso (plaster). It is covered in gilt. Mummy masks such as this were often coloured with gold gilt because of gold's symbolic importance. The shiny nature of the metal was paralleled in the shiny nature of the justified dead and imbued the deceased with the same quality of shininess. Gold is also an eternal metal which does not tarnish.

We had noticed that the piece also has a wedjet eye on the forehead. What we hadn't paid much attention to was something else, pointed out to us by the visiting researcher. He asked if the mask had an inscription circling the crown. We couldn't really tell from the case, and the piece is damaged. So yesterday, I got off display to have a closer look.

Aha! Our visitor was correct. This is what we saw:



Hieroglyphs could be seen- very faintly. The researcher had suggested either Book 19 or 151 of the Book of the Dead. You might just be able to see, this is part of Book of the Dead 151a. The bit above the brow can be translated as: 'Your right eye is the Evening Boat and your left eye is the Morning Boat; your eyebrows are as the Nine Gods....'.

The text replaces the 'crown of justification', a wreath, often shown on mummy masks. The rest of the spell describes the features of the deceased in godlike terms; your brow as Anubis, hair as Ptah-Sokar, etc. Making the deceased into a mummy was likened to making it into a god, and gods, of course, had qualities of eternal gold.


For information of the Crown of Justification see Christian Riggs 2005, The Beautiful Burial in Roman Egypt. Art, Identity and Funerary Religion pages 81-83.

For parallels to the wreath text see Tamás Mekis 2012, The Cartonnage of Nestanetjeretten (Louvre AF 12859; MG E 1082) and it enigma. Bulletin de L'Institut Français D'Archéologie Orientale, 112, pages 243-273.