“People in Awe”: An Exhibition Unveils the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead | Exhibitions

IIn the ancient world, the journey to eternal bliss was not easy. For the Greeks, you’ll have to take a ride with Charon across the River Styx and hope to be one of the lucky few to make it to Elysium. If you lived among the ancient Aztecs, your journey to Mictlán involved many struggles, including climbing a mountain made of obsidian and crossing a desert where there is no gravity and you are buffeted by tremendous winds.

For the ancient Egyptians, the journey to the afterlife involved a journey full of dangers where your wits were tested at every turn – those lucky enough to make it would sit before the god Osiris and 42 other gods while their hearts were weighed on a single feather. If things go sideways, your soul will be devoured by a fearsome goddess called Amit, made up of a lion, a hippopotamus, and a crocodile (the three creatures the ancient Egyptians were most likely to eat).

No wonder the Egyptians developed a collection of about 160 charms aimed at helping the dead reach heaven. Known today as the Book of the Dead — a 19th-century coinage by German professor Dr. Karl Richard Lepsius, which is undoubtedly more attractive than the Egyptian’s literal translation, “The Book of Exodus by Day” — a 2,000-year-old copy of the text is now on display at the Brooklyn Museum in a magnificent, complete, gilded copy.

“This Book of the Dead is both gilded and complete, both incredibly rare,” said Egyptologist Ekaterina Barbash, who before working on this exhibition had never seen gilded papyrus in all her decades of research in ancient Egypt. One of about 10 gilded Egyptian papyri known to exist, this one is particularly distinctive, as the blank leaves marking the beginning and end of the scroll indicate that it is a complete book.

Thousands of years ago, the ancient Egyptians began writing incantations on the walls of tombs in hopes of giving the dead some help in making it through the journey to heaven. “There is a long tradition of religious literature, dating back to the pyramid texts in the third millennium BC,” Barbash said. “There is also evidence that it was part of the oral tradition before.”

Over time, these texts multiplied, and were eventually collected into a single scroll. Those wealthy enough would ask the scribe to create their own version of the Book of the Dead, which could then be used in the funerary rites of a deceased family member. These conclusions were far-reaching in nature.

“Different chapters in the book address different topics,” Barbash said. “Some texts might be used by the living, such as protective texts against things like scorpions, crocodiles, or insects. Other texts might be recited during mummification or burial, and there were even transmutation spells that helped the soul transform into different things… and travel between worlds.”

The Brooklyn Museum’s copy of the Book of the Dead has a long and complicated history. Dating back to between 340 BC and 57 BC, this scroll was brought to America in the 19th century by a British doctor named Henry Abbott, who held a huge exhibition of Egyptian antiquities, hoping to find a buyer for the scroll. This proved unsuccessful, although he succeeded in attracting the attention of poet Walt Whitman. “Whitman signed the guest book 20 times,” Barbash said. “He was really interested in the ancient world, and even became friends with Abbott and mentioned the book in a few of his articles.”

The scroll eventually came into the possession of the New-York Historical Society (now known as the New-York Historical Society) and in 1948 it arrived at the Brooklyn Museum. Fast forward to the 2000s, and a three-year effort, led by star conservator Ahmed Tariq and museum conservators Lisa Bruno, Sarah Boone, and Josephine Jencks, worked to separate the papyrus from the acid covering it was mounted on, and find a way to stabilize it for generations to come.

“It’s like if you took shredded wheat and flattened it, it would be really crisp,” Bruno said. The team used gels to deliver water to the scroll in a controlled manner, and were able to separate the wet papyrus from the backing. They then mounted it back onto special, ultra-fine Japanese kozo-fiber paper, which can be up to 0.02 mm thick per sheet.

The fact that many parts of this copy of the Book of the Dead are gold-plated is closely related to the purpose of the text and ancient Egyptian beliefs about gold. Certain parts of the papyrus, such as images of crowns, sun disks and shrines, were painted with gold to indicate their importance. Additionally, the ancient Egyptians associated gold with concepts of rebirth and transformation into a divinity, so it would make sense to gild parts of the Book of the Dead version.

“The ancient Egyptians believed that the gods had golden skin, silver bones, and lapis lazuli hair,” Barbash said. “Gold doesn’t tarnish, so for them it was associated with immortality and the divine. There was also an aspect of it that was just a fantasy because you could afford it.”

Because there was little consensus about which texts should be included in the Book of the Dead, and also because of the unique nature of individual copyists, each copy of the book was different from all the others. The dimensions of the scroll itself may have varied, as could the texts chosen, the sequence in which they were, and even the choice of individual words and spelling. “Adding other words and interpretations was almost a religious vision,” Barbash said. “Scribes sometimes provide alternative texts in the same copy of the book. And when you get to the bottom of the page, you can see the scribes saying, ‘Oh my God, we’ve run out of space!’” Trying to fit everything together. Reading is painful, but it is human.”

Bringing The Book of the Dead back to the public was a huge undertaking, and according to Barbash and Bruno, it was worth the effort. “People who have come to the museum so far are in awe, as am I,” Bruno said. “I’m really amazed,” Barbash added. “Everything is perfect, it’s like lace and a spider’s web. It’s so fragile and complex and beautiful. It’s so amazing.”