 |
|
Livre
des morts(Book of the Dead)
Period
of the Middle Kingdom
(19911633 BCE)
Courtesy
of Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Département des Manuscrits
|
Book
of the Dead
Period of the Middle Kingdom
(19911633 BCE)
Along
with the papers of Jean François Champollion (17901832)—the
renowned scholar who, through his work on the
Rosetta Stone, deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics
in 1822—the Bibliothèque nationale de France holds
a collection of Egyptian papyrus brought back
to France by Egyptologists during the nineteenth
century. Among them is this fragment of the Livre
des morts (Book of the Dead) which belonged
to the Stedna Collection and is now kept in the
Oriental Division of the Manuscripts Department
of the Library.
The
Livre des morts is part of a funeral ritual:
it is a collection of sacred formulae which
was buried in the tomb with the deceased. These
prayers were available for the deceased to pray
to the divinities during the passage through the
underworld, to comfort and help justify the judgement
and the weighing of the soul.
This
fragment (the beginning of chapter 17), written
in hieroglyphics, is addressed to Ankh-as-an-Isi,
the priestess of the god Amon, and dates from
the Middle Kingdom period. Later, Egyptians used
more cursive writing, called hieratic and demotic.
This was derived from hieroglyphics, but the forms
of images are no longer recognisable in it.
The
papyrus plant is a reed, and was used as long
ago as 3000 BCE in Egypt to produce a particularly
supple and light writing material. The stem of
the plant was cut into narrow strips which were
placed side by side to make writing sheets, which
were then made into rolls.
Egyptian
monuments are still yielding their mysteries today,
and the great moments of the Pharaohs' culture
and the life of their people continue to emerge
as archaeological excavations progress.
|