Egyptian Book of the Dead

Translation by Dr. Raymond O. Faulkner

Part 2

The book also features the translation of the late Dr. Raymond O. Faulkner, completed in 1972, and acknowledged by scholars as the finest in English to date. Faulkner's translation has been augmented and updated by Dr. Ogden Goelet of New York University, who has also written an introduction and extensive commentary.

Introduction
by Ogden Goelet, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University
(continued from last page)

Egyptian Religion

Egyptian religion was fundamentally polytheistic, although there were tendencies to view certain deities as implicit in other gods and in the universe. The multiplicity of Egyptian gods and their many manifestations is probably the greatest source of modern conceptual problems with Egyptian religion. Monotheism and polytheism have become more than merely descriptive terms today; they imply a value judgment as well. We tend to look at the belief in many gods as primitive, and therefore intellectually weaker. Polytheistic religions, however, have certain strengths, particularly from a political standpoint. In a polytheistic society, the state does not have to enforce a theological conformity on its citizens. With many gods and cults, there is less reason for attempting to make religious beliefs wholly consistent. Differing opinions on the nature of the divine need not be seen as conflicts or heresies; they are simply alternative interpretations. Without the compulsion of dogma, polytheistic religions allow the individual greater freedom to define his or her own relationship with the divine.

The borderline between various deities and beliefs was constantly blurred, for it was easy to find some characteristic of one god present in another. Many features which appear contradictory or illogical at first glance are actually accommodations of contrasting viewpoints. In the polytheistic context, logically stated dogma was essentially unnecessary. Theological literature is often aimed at convincing the reader of a unique truth, but such argumentation would be foreign to the purpose of most Egyptian religious literature. Egyptian theology tended more toward inclusion than exclusion. It was not expressed fanatically — except for the brief appearance of a virtual monotheism during the reign of the “heretic” pharaoh Akhenaten (1379–1362 b.c.e.). If, however, theology can be defined as meditations on the nature of the divine, then nearly all Egyptian religious texts are theological. The great Egyptian hymns of the New Kingdom, dedicated to Osiris, Ptah, Amun, and Re, are more than collections of laudatory epithets; they delineate the characteristics of those gods in such detail, they likely represent the collected and reasoned products of priestly associations. The Great Hymn to the Aten, in particular, contains an unusually detailed statement of the uniqueness of Akhenaten's god as well as his place and function in the cosmos.

The Egyptian afterlife, like many Egyptian conceptions, was characterized by a contrasting duality: a chthonic netherworld presided over by Osiris, Lord of Resurrection, and a solar/astral existence, in which the sun god Re was supreme. But neither god was exempt from the struggle against nonexistence. At the moment of creation the forces of chaos were overcome but not eliminated from the earth. Most of “that which does not exist” was consigned to the fringes of the world, namely foreign lands, deserts, and particularly the underworld, but order and disorder continued to exist side by side both in this world and beyond it. If the Book of the Dead often appears surreal and confusing, let us remember that it describes what happens after death, the moment when one left the orderly world of Egypt and confronted nonexistence and chaos. The notion that the next world might be perilous, confusing, and unpredictable is hardly unique to Egyptian culture, but the Egyptians universalized the irrationality: not only mortals but the gods themselves had to contend with the same perils. The purpose of the mortuary literature was to enable the deceased to emerge victorious from these trials.

Because of our unfamiliarity with much of its mythical and allegorical underpinnings, Egyptian mortuary literature is often unfairly described as a collection comprised mostly of magical spells. Egyptologists today are just beginning to deal with the complex interaction of myth, ritual, and magic in Egyptian religion. Magic played an important part in the Book of the Dead, but its role should not be exaggerated. Magic is a word which is very easy to use carelessly. One man's magic is apt to be another man's religion, especially if the symbolic nature of ritual is overlooked. One wonders what a jaundiced Egyptian observer would have said about the role of bread and wine in the Christian church, or the function of food in the Jewish Passover seder; magical, perhaps?

Word and Image

While several generations of Egyptologists have dismissed the Book of the Dead as a degraded expression of Egyptian religion, the work continues to fascinate the public. The lure of the book's mysterious language is heightened by the colorful and elegant vignettes, which surmount the hieroglyphic text with its odd and appealing symbols. Modern observers feel a semiotic saturation. Browsing through the plates in this volume or walking past an unrolled Book of the Dead in a museum, we are struck by the calm conviction with which the complex and bizarre aspects of the Egyptian afterlife are presented. The serenity of the Egyptian imagery conveys the impression that these people really knew about life after death.

Art historians remark constantly on the hieroglyphic nature of much Egyptian art, in which text and scene seemingly engage in constant conversation. We have come to realize that word, image, and reality were a unity in Egyptian thought. So close is this identification in the Egyptian language that “idea” and “word” can be expressed by the same term. This conceptual association persisted after Egypt had converted to Christianity, when the most popular book of the Bible was the Gospel of John, which begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God . . .” By means of a word or an image, thought could be actualized. In the past decade scholars have consequently turned more attention to the vignettes in hope of a fuller understanding of the text.

The Present Translation and Commentary

At the top of each sheet of every Book of the Dead papyrus stand the illustrations, essential to the understanding of the text beneath. Only a few papyri from the vast corpus of extant Books of the Dead can compare with the beauty of the Papyrus of Ani. This magnificent manuscript was purchased by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, to whom the British Museum owes many of the most important pieces in its collection. The beautiful color facsimiles that he produced, to accompany the translation which he released in a separate volume, did much to bring this masterpiece to public attention and to popularize an important work of Egyptian religion.

The images will always retain a timeless quality, but advances in the field of Egyptology have rendered Budge's translation quite antiquated. We have replaced it for this publication with one of the best available today, that of the late Raymond O. Faulkner. Professor Faulkner, whose career was too wide ranging to summarize here, was a great translator; he had a flair for rendering difficult Egyptian texts into clear English, including the most problematic religious materials. I have personally “loved to death” four copies of his Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian, a completely indispensable book for Egyptologists. His insights have made his work on the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts classics, and he produced wonderful renderings of the masterpieces of Egyptian literature. Unfortunately, Faulkner died before he could complete his work on the Book of the Dead, so it appeared without any commentary. My commentary, wherein many of the themes introduced here are treated at greater length, is my main contribution to the present volume. Although the Ani Papyrus is a masterpiece of Egyptian book illustration, its text is frequently inferior to that of many contemporaneous manuscripts; therefore the translation presented here does not precisely represent the hieroglyphic text shown. Like most modern translations of the Book of the Dead, Faulkner's translation was drawn from a composite of several manuscripts, resulting in an “ideal text” rather than representing one specific papyrus. When, in the case of certain chapters or passages, the version found in the Ani Papyrus and Faulkner's version are too much at variance, I have substituted a new translation based on the text of the Ani Papyrus; the more significant of such alterations have been noted in the second section of the commentary. In the case of a small number of chapters which were not included in his work, but are present in the Ani Papyrus, my translation is given. Finally, scholarly opinion has changed on some minor points, and I have altered Faulkner's translation accordingly. It is a testament to Faulkner's deft touch that so few changes were required twenty years after his translation was done.

Egyptian texts present the translator with greater technical problems than most ancient tongues. The Egyptians left behind none of the usual (and invaluable) aids to translation. There are no contemporaneous dictionaries of Egyptian; bilingual texts are few and brief; and no well-known sister tongue survives. For the most part, philologists have been forced to get a sense of the vocabulary using Egyptian material alone. This often leaves lexicographers in the unenviable position of comparing the obscure and unknown with the merely uncertain. Like modern Hebrew and Arabic, Egyptian was written without vowels, so that only the consonantal structure of the language has been preserved. Its vital organs of sound and rhythm are gone, leaving behind dry bones. Much of the poetry and word play that surely characterized the Book of the Dead is lost forever.

Lexicography remains today, more than a century and a half after Champollion, the Achilles' heel of Egyptian translation. For instance, we know many Egyptian words that express some degree of fear or happiness. But which one of these expresses dread, anxiety, or worry; how do we distinguish between ecstasy, delight, joy, and jubilation? The Egyptians composed their inscriptions carefully, delighting especially in synonymous and contrasting parallels, playing on sounds, alluding to other texts and genres. A translator can feel the skill and balance of a text, feel the breath of words, and sense allusions, but so much simply eludes us. As a result, we render Egyptian rainbows into monochromatic arcs; our translations may be accurate, but often have a colorless, affectless tone, bereft of the vivacity and tonal nuances of the original.

When dealing with the intricate and often convoluted imagery of Egyptian mortuary texts and their vignettes, it would be very easy to produce the Egyptological equivalent of Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov's brilliant satire of academic writing, in which the footnotes and the commentary swell up and overwhelm the original work. These texts are notoriously obscure. In my commentary I try to explain where I can and summarize opinions in other places. The vignettes receive particular attention; I have attempted to show how these images interact with the text beneath them, and vice versa.

It should be borne in mind that there often can be more than one interpretation, and we should beware of overconfidently imposing our conceptions upon Egyptian religion. The Book of the Dead was never meant to be a unity. The fact that it envisions both an Osirian and a Solar afterlife demonstrates the impossibility of seeking a single message. The commentary is designed to introduce the non-specialist to the aspects of Egyptian religion which are relevant to the Book of the Dead. It does not pretend to be all-inclusive or the final word on the subject.

The Modern Relevance of the Book of the Dead

Man is a historical as well as a social animal. In order to understand where we are today and to sense where we are headed, we must know where we have been; an awareness of past and future makes us uniquely moral beings. Egypt, non-European, yet neither wholly African nor wholly Near Eastern, makes us aware of our multicultural heritage. We are only beginning to realize the extent to which Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia influenced European civilization. The cultures of the eastern Mediterranean were the crucible of Judeo-Christian and Islamic values, in whose development Egypt played a significant role. Mosaic law and many aspects of Judaism show evidence of positive and negative reactions to the sojourn in Egypt. Contemplating the delightful interaction of image and word in the Book of the Dead, along with its multiplicity of gods, can help us to understand both why the deity of the religions of the Book is abstract in nature and why monotheistic creeds should prohibit graven images so strongly. Greece and Rome, too, were simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by Egypt. The worship of deities in animal form, for instance, appeared naive to them. But Egypt's great intelligence, elegance, and antiquity demanded the attention of the classical world, which normally dismissed civilizations other than its own.

The poetry and allusions of the Book of the Dead enhance its relevance for modern readers, for poetry and great literature can refocus our thoughts and beliefs. The Egyptians' striking integration of symbol, art, and language compares favorably with our society's obsession with imagery, political and otherwise. Examining their approach to life helps us see our society in a different light; the contrast combats fossilization of thought. Certainly the high sophistication of ancient Egyptian culture is a marvelous curative for the arrogant notion of our modern world that less technically advanced peoples are perforce intellectually inferior.

The Book of the Dead, at turns so familiar and so alien to our beliefs, offers a unique vantage point for examining Egyptian religion and its worldview. The Book of the Dead promised resurrection to all mankind, as a reward for righteous living, long before Judaism and Christianity embraced that concept. The Egyptians believed in a moral judgment of the dead, but even virtue triumphant would be compelled to contend with dangerous irrationality. The gods too had to struggle against the enemies of universal order. Here, the Egyptians seem to have anticipated Jefferson's remark that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. The notion that the deceased shared in the perils and rewards of the afterlife on a nearly equal footing with the deities reveals a striking sense of human dignity, for the Egyptian hoped to become a companion and equal of the gods.

Dr. Ogden Goelet

New York University