The Historic Egyptian Guide of the Lifeless: A Guidebook for Surviving the Afterlife

The say­ing “You possibly can’t take it with you” could also be a cliché to all of us right here within the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, however it could exhausting­ly have made sense to an historical Egypt­ian. One of the crucial huge­ly identified qual­i­ties of that civ­i­liza­tion’s higher crust, in spite of everything, is that its mem­bers spared no expense attempt­ing to do exactly that. Essentially the most com­pelling evi­dence contains the tombs of the pharaohs, lav­ish­ly stocked as they have been with each­factor from dai­ly neces­si­ties to reli­gious arti­information to ser­vants (in effi­gy or oth­er­sensible). And no person who was any­physique in historical Egypt could be seen shuf­fling off this mor­tal coil — or what­ev­er the form through which their poets forged it — with­out a Guide of the Lifeless.

“A stan­dard com­po­nent in Egypt­ian elite buri­als, the Guide of the Lifeless was not a e-book within the mod­ern sense of the time period however a com­pendi­um of some 200 rit­u­al spells and prayers, with instruc­tions on how the deceased’s spir­it ought to recite them within the right here­after,” writes the New York Instances’ Franz Lidz.

“Com­piled and refined over mil­len­ni­ums since about 1550 B.C.,” the textual content “professional­vid­ed a kind of visu­al map that allowed the brand new­ly dis­em­bod­ied soul to nav­i­gate the duat, a maze-like nether­world of cav­erns, hills and burn­ing lakes.” Every of its “spells” addressed a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion the deceased may encounter on that jour­ney: a snake assault, decap­i­ta­tion, a flip­ing the wrong way up that “would reverse your diges­tive func­tions and trigger you to con­sume your personal waste.”

We are able to cer­tain­ly underneath­stand why these high-sta­tus historical Egyp­tians did­n’t wish to take their possibilities. In the ani­mat­ed Ted-ED video above, you’ll be able to fol­low the jour­ney of 1 such indi­vid­ual, a scribe from thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry-BC Thebes referred to as Anees. After his physique underneath­goes two months of mum­mi­fi­ca­tion, his spir­it makes its har­row­ing jour­ney by the underneath­world, name­ing upon the spells he’d thought to incorporate in his Guide of the Lifeless when alive. Then comes ethical judg­ment by a bat­tery of 42 “asses­sor gods” and a weigh­ing of his coronary heart, the ultimate step earlier than his admit­tance to a lush wheat subject that’s the Egypt­ian after­life. Whether or not Anees received that far stays an open ques­tion, however mod­ern phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal enshrine­ment of Books of the Lifeless (extra of which you’ll be able to see up-close at Google Arts & Cul­ture), has grant­ed him and his com­pa­tri­ots a sort of immor­tal­i­ty in spite of everything.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Historic Artwork of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

Hear Lau­rie Ander­son Learn from the Tibetan Guide of the Lifeless on New Album Songs from the Bar­do

Sci­en­tists Dis­cov­er that Historic Egyp­tians Drank Hal­lu­cino­genic Cock­tails from 2,300 Yr-Outdated Mug

When the Grate­ful Lifeless Performed on the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, within the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Had been the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Not Constructed Up, However Carved Down?: A Daring New The­o­ry Explains Their Con­struc­tion

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the writer of the newslet­ter Books on Cities in addition to the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.