Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 87:345 (Jan 1930)
Article: The Book Of The Dead
Author: F. S. Thompson

BSac 87:345 (Jan 1930) p. 89

The Book Of The Dead

Recent Discoveries and Translations of Ancient Egyptian Writings

F. S. Thompson

Introduction

1. Title:

The title, “The Book of the Dead,” as first used by Lepsius and was applied to the papyrus in the Turin Museum which he published in 1842 and described as “the largest piece of Egyptian literature which has been preserved.” This work of Lepsius was for a long time the foundation of all work done along this line; and the title, The Book of the Dead, has come to be applied to the various chapters of the numerous papyri intended, as the Turin Papyrus, for the use of the dead.

In his introduction to the Papyrus of Ani, page 3, Budge says,

“The title of Book of the Dead has been usually given by Egyptologists to the Theban and Saite Recensions, but in this introduction the term is intended to include the general body of religious texts which deal with the welfare of the dead and their new life in the world beyond the grave, and which are known to have existed and to have been in use among the Egyptians from about 4000 B. C to the early centuries of the Christian era.”

We shall make the same broad use of the title, and include under it the Pyramid and Coffin Texts of the Old and Middle Kingdoms respectively.

2. The Discovery of the Pyramid Texts in 1880:

The great pyramids of Gizeh, which absorbed the attention and drained the resources of the kings of the Fourth Dynasty, contain no inscriptions; and it was generally supposed that the pyramid tombs were all without inscriptions until Mariette, in 1880, penetrated the tomb of Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty and found a copy of the Book

BSac 87:345 (Jan 1930) p. 90

of the Dead carved in hieroglyphics on its passages, galleries and chambers. Similar copies were later discovered in the tomb of Unis of the Fifth Dynasty and in the tombs of Teti, Merners, and Pepi II of the Sixth Dynasty.

We thus have five copies of this recension of the Book of the Dead, representing a period of about a century and a half, or roughly from 2625 to 2475 B. C.

Historical Origin

3. Antiquity of and Prehistoric Sources of the Pyramid Texts.

“The Pyramid Texts as a whole furnish us the oldest chapter in human thinking preserved to us, the remotest reach in the intellectual history of man which we are now able to discern.” (Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, p. 84.)

“The earliest texts bear within themselves proof, not only of having been composed but also of having been revised or edited, lo...