The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Translated by P. Le Page Renouf, with commentary by Édouard Naville
The Egyptian funerary corpus properly titled "The Chapters of Coming Forth by Day": spells, hymns, and the weighing-of-the-heart judgment scene that guided the dead through the underworld.
- Composed
- New Kingdom, circa 1550 BCE, with older roots
- Original language
- Egyptian (hieroglyphic)
- In the SOL library
- 297 searchable passages
- Rights
- Public domain
What this text is
What Europeans named the Book of the Dead, the Egyptians called the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day. It is not a single book but a corpus of around two hundred spells, hymns, and instructions, copied onto papyri and tomb walls for over a millennium, meant to equip the dead for the journey through the Duat, the Egyptian underworld.
Its most famous scene, the weighing of the heart against the feather of Maat, truth, is one of the oldest detailed pictures of moral judgment after death in any literature. This edition pairs Renouf’s translation with Naville’s commentary, both foundational works of nineteenth-century Egyptology.
Why researchers read it
The Egyptian material preserves a fully developed map of post-mortem experience that predates the Greek, Jewish, and Christian versions that later absorbed pieces of it. For SOL’s investigations into how traditions describe consciousness beyond the body, this corpus is the deepest ancient stratum available.
Potent One, at thine appointed moment, Most Mighty One, Prince of An-arr-ef, Eternal Lord, author of eternity. Thou art the Lord of Suten-henen ; Hail to thee, who restest upon Maat ; Thou art the Lord of Abydos, thy limbs reach to Ta-tsert ; Thou art he who abominatest wrong ; Hail to thee, in the midst of thy Bark, who bringest the Nile from his fountain ; upon whose dead body the light shineth ; he is the One who is in Nechen ; Hail to thee, author of the gods, King of North and South, Osiris, the triumphant one, possessing the entire universe in his bene- ficent alternations ; He is the Lord of the Universe ; Grant me passage in peace. I am righteous, I speak not falsehood knowingly, I am not guilty of duplicity." * Boih Chabasu and Hamniernit have the sign of the plural, which may arise from the omission oi -mIw art above before the first of these words.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Translated by P. Le Page Renouf, with commentary by Édouard Naville · Public domain
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