Counsel for the Afterlife

Scrolls of papyrus have been found resting between the legs of many Egyptian mummies, wrapped up along with them in the linen shrouds in which these dead were laid to rest. The scrolls contain both text and images and constitute a kind of guide to the kingdom of the dead. They were intended to familiarize the deceased with the underworld, and assist him in the trials he would face there and with his passage back from the dark depths into the light of the sun. For this reason the Egyptians called a book of this kind a guide to emerging into the day.

It was 19th century grave robbers who dubbed the mysterious scrolls "books of the dead". Presumably it was from one such grave robber that the English Egyptologist Sir E.A. Wallis Budge purchased what is known as the Papyrus of Ani (part of the Theban Book of the Dead), in Luxor in 1880. The scroll measures 23.79 meters in length by 38 centimeters in breadth, and has been on view in the British Museum ever since, albeit cut up into 37 separate leaves. According to Budge's own account, the colors of the papyrus - more than 3,000 years old - were still light when it was first unrolled, but quickly darkened on contact with the air. Leaves 3 and 4 of the papyrus are reproduced here. Both of them depict the royal scribe Ani, for whom this book of the dead was prepared, entering into the kingdom of the dead. Judges await him and weigh his heart on a balance; a monster awaits him too, threatening to devour him; and finally, in the right-hand picture, there is the god Osiris, lord of the underworld.

Ani's demeanor is somewhat bowed, and deferential. The position of his arm, folded across his breast, is indicative of submissiveness toward superiors. Behind him, in the left-hand picture, is his wife Tutu, who probably predeceased her husband. She accompanies him for a part of the way. When alive, she was a priestess at the temple of Amon and sang in the choir: she is still holding the sistrum, the ancient Egyptian rattle that was used to accompany temple singing. The couple are wearing ceremonial vestments and artfully curled and plaited wigs, and their eyes are made up black.

Ani apparently lived around 1300 BC in Thebes, the capital of the Egyptian empire, not many years after the famed Pharaoh Tutankhamen (1332-23 BC). Clearly the "true royal scribe" occupied high rank in the Egyptian temple hierarchy. One title recorded on the papyrus describes him as the overseer over all the votive offerings brought to the gods at Thebes and Abydos. In addition it was probably he who fixed the not inconsiderable dues that wealthy Egyptians regularly paid to the temple in the form of grain and livestock, and also administered the immense property belonging to the temple. In a word, he was a hard-working man who enjoyed his monarch's favor.

Ani was one of the caste of affluent officials who could afford a book of the dead. For some 1500 years, from 1550 BC till Roman times, the custom was to place these scrolls in the tomb with the deceased. They were either prepared especially or were bought ready-made with only the name of the owner to be entered. The price was about that of a slave, or half the annual income of a worker, which meant that these books were unaffordable for the lower classes.

Indeed, in earlier times a guide to the underworld had been the royal prerogative alone. The texts were not inscribed on papyrus, however, but were painted onto the walls of the secret burial chambers in the pyramids. A certain degree of democratization, at least with regard to the afterlife, later enabled well-to-do servants of the state to equip themselves with a book of the dead as well.

Henceforth, having one's own book of the dead was an essential part of the elaborate preparations for death that every pious and well-to-do Egyptian made in his lifetime. He would have an inaccessible burial chamber filled with all the requisites he would want in the afterlife: stores, furniture, effigies of his servants and wives. A stone sarcophagus was made, and a plaster or card death-mask. The burial rites were also decided in advance. Only when these preparations had been made could a contemporary of Tutankhamen rest easy in the contemplation of the day when he would "cross to the other shore".

The jackal-headed god Anubis is seen kneeling under the right part of a scales crossbar. "He of the scales" had the task of making the first examination that Ani the scribe would undergo in the afterlife: his heart would be weighed against a feather.

Anubis was also known as the Lord of the Westerners. To the west of every Egyptian city, separated but within seeing distance of the living, was a necropolis or city of the dead, and Anubis was the presiding deity. The wild dogs and jackals that strayed in these places threatened the repose of the dead, digging up graves and dragging off the remains found in them. By making a jackal-headed god the protector of their dead, the Egyptians were hoping to contain this nuisance.

Anubis also oversaw the complex embalming rites. These lasted seventy days; during this period the corpse was dried in sodium and conserved using resins, oils and spices. The exact composition of these mixtures has remained the secret of the priests of Anubis. The centerpiece of the scene is the large scales, a balance such as was used to weigh gold or silver. Less valuable metals such as copper were counted by the bar, while grain was measured out in bushels. The balance was used only for the most precious materials. In our picture, a baboon is ensuring that the balance is working properly; this is Thoth, god of letters and scribe of the gods. He is sitting on the upright post from which the crossbar is suspended. The pointed triangular indicator is firmly attached to it. Only if it points vertically down are the pans of the scales perfectly balanced. Anubis is doing the balancing, using a heart-shaped weight hanging from a hook.

Below the left part of the crossbar are deities of lesser rank: Shai, the god of destiny, and behind him the two goddesses Meshkent and Renenet. These have long known Ani. It was Meshkent, at the time of his birth, who determined the span of his life and the hour of his death. The head of this deity can be seen a second time in our picture, above Shai, on the birth brick.

Egyptian women delivered their children crouched on a birth brick. Renenet, the nurse-goddess, gave suck to Ani and watched over his childhood development. Both of these deities preside over the fate of mankind, and might testify on Ani's behalf at the last judgment. Beside them, represented as a bird with a human head, Ani's spirit is watching the weighing from the roof of his tomb. The spirit can fly, but it always has to return to the body. Its fate too depends on the outcome.

The Lords of Justice are enthroned high above the scales. Gods of heaven, earth and light, they are the judges who will pronounce upon Ani, according to the result of the weighing. Judgment is passed in the Hall of Pure Justice, where this world and the next meet. Mayet, the goddess of justice and truth, is present only in symbolic form, in the emblem of divine order: the feather lying on one of the pans. Ani's heart must prove as light as the feather if it is to pass the test. The conduct of a man on earth is being weighed here against the ideal of divine justice.

Very few could hope to be equal to such a test. Everyone feared it. The one source of hope was the help afforded by the book of the dead, which not only identified the dangers of the underworld, but also offered the means of mitigating them. In other words, it contained magic spells.

Almost two hundred spells were given to the deceased on his journey. If he said them at the right moment, it was possible to achieve a favorable result. Spell number 125 was the one to recite before the judges. It contained the "negative confession", and was very long, beginning "I have done no injustice towards mankind" and continuing "I have not mistreated animals" and concluding "I have not shamed the god of my city".

Nor was an assurance forgotten that was all-important for lands made fertile by the waters of the Nile: "I did not hold back the flood waters in their season." From the "negative confession" we gather what the worst crimes were in ancient Egypt: untruthfulness and lies, embezzlement and fraud. This recitation did not include a truthful account of the deceased's conduct on earth; indeed, it was designed to prevent the truth coming to light. It was a conjuration.

The Egyptians also believed that visual representation of the book of the dead possessed magical power. They thought that the likeness of an object or creature partook of its virtues: thus, the servants whose ushabti effigies were placed in the tomb would continue to clothe and feed their master in the afterlife, and depicting the celestial scales on the papyrus as perfectly balanced would magically ensure that the heart and feather weighed the same. This hope countered some of the terror inspired by the ceremony.

Ani is found innocent. The judges pronounce him to be in harmony with the divine order: he is a just man, and "the Devourer" shall have no power over him.

Naturally a book of the dead did not depict this menacing "Devourer" eating the guilty. Kept at bay by the spells, its reptilian mouth remained shut. The monster was a hybrid of various beasts: crocodile, hippopotamus and lion. If a "guilty" deceased really were devoured by this creature, it would be the worst punishment conceivable to the Egyptians: complete and utter annihilation, the second and definitive death, with no hope of future reincarnation.

In the left pan of the scales is a heart, red with white veins to the top and sides. It is not the whole human being who is weighed against the ostrich feather, symbol of the cosmic order, but only that part of him which the Egyptians considered the true center of the personality, the seat of reason, will and conscience. Unlike the other inner organs and entrails, the heart was not removed when the body was embalmed and kept in jars. It was the most important organ and remained in the mummy. The heart constituted a potential source of danger at the moment of judgment. What if it should testify against its owner? It might expose the "confession" as lies, nullify the spell, and tip the balance of the scales. The book of the dead anticipated this problem and had another spell to counteract it, number 30. It is headed: "Spell to ensure that the heart (of the dead) does not oppose him in the realm of the dead."

In our picture, the text is in hieroglyphics to the left over the crossbar of the scales. It begins at the top right and runs in vertical columns. Twice a crouching man can be seen behind a heart hieroglyph that closely resembles the heart on the scales. In the second column from the right we find the name of the scribe, Ani, in black script, and above it the insignia of the guild of scribes (a stylized palette with writing implements) and, below, a bird, a stylized water-lily, two reeds, and a crouching man. In this spell, Ani twice calls upon his heart to be silent. First, he addresses "the heart of my mother", meaning the heart he was given when he came into the world; then he addresses his own heart, the heart that has evolved through his lifetime "in ever-changing form". This spell, which has also been found frequently on heart-shaped amulets, was seemingly in use more than two thousand years before Christ - which would make it one of the oldest prayers of humankind.

The Egyptians believed that the book of the dead was the work of Thoth, god of letters and scribe of the gods, seen here recording the outcome of the weighing. In a civilization that believed in the magical power of written or drawn signs, anyone who was able to make them enjoyed the highest reputation. Thus Thoth was credited with the invention of the arts and sciences. He was the lord of magic and the mysterious god of the moon. He was also a lord of justice and truth, and ensured that the divine order of the cosmos was observed. He appears in our picture as the baboon atop the scales post, and again as an ibis-headed official. The marsh-dwelling ibis seemed a mysterious bird to the Egyptians, on account of its secluded manner of living. The birds seemed forever looking for something, so skill in finding was ascribed to them, and thus special experience and cleverness.

In his left hand the god has a palette with depressions for the black and red ink used in headings. He is standing to write, with a sharpened rush (more of which he has in the palette), on the wall of the hall.

It was usual to sit to write, without a desk, on a scroll held on the knees. Writing was normally done on papyrus processed from the steeped and pressed pith of the plant, which grew in the marshlands of the Nile delta.

"Thoth has examined Ani in writing," the inscription reads, which means that the deity has registered the name of the dead man among those of the just. Not until this registration has been made is judgment concluded, for a result or sentence was only legally binding when recorded in writing. The Egyptians were meticulous in this point: they wanted to record everything for eternity, if at all possible. They had a veritable mania for collecting and recording.

Every event of importance, in town and country alike, was set down by official scribes, from the sale of a slave to the yield of the grape harvest. The scribes noted how many baskets of grapes were delivered, and on every wine pitcher they noted the year, the vineyard, and the vintner's name, before transferring all the data to a special ledger. This information served both to monitor labor and to fix the level of taxes. Apparently there was one scribe to every ten workers.

The caste of scribes, along with the castes of priests and soldiers, played a key role in the centralized and rigidly hierarchical ancient Egyptian state. Their education was lengthy and demanding: their training lasted some twelve years, in schools attached to the temples, and consisted in copying old texts. Subsequently they would be employed as book-keepers, technicians, scholars or artists, and above all as officials in the administration. Like Ani, they oversaw the property of the gods or the king. They fixed and collected taxes, and dispensed justice. They were state officials for life, and the positions could generally be inherited. Thus they were the immediate representatives of the highest caste, and "the eye of the king", and were themselves a proud caste: "Come to me, Thoth, holy ibis", one Egyptian scribe prayed, "guide me, make me diligent in my profession, for your profession is the finest of them all. They say that he who excels in it will be elevated to the aristocracy."

In this select company, Ani was designated a true scribe", which means that his title was not merely conferred as an honorific. Ani had learnt the skills of the god Thoth from scratch, and quite probably he composed at least parts of his own book of the dead himself. The falcon-headed god Horus conducts the acquitted Ani to a sacrificial table on which are confections, meat and fruit. In the background are vessels containing wine or beer. Ani the scribe kneels; all of these earthly things are his offering to the god Osiris, king of the dead.

The lord of eternity is enthroned on a naos, a magnificent wooden shrine such as were used to carry the images of gods in processions on feast days. The canopy rests on lotus stems, recalling the fact that Osiris was apparently originally a fertility god. The green coloring of the deity's face recalls this too. Green was the color of the primeval mud from which the Egyptians believed all life came, the color of the Nile when it flooded the land every year and made it fertile.

Osiris is holding the insignia of power: the crooked staff, scepter and whip. On his head he is wearing the atef crown, composed of a white miter-like crown and two ostrich feathers. These are the emblems of the highest station in all Egypt, that of the all-powerful Pharaoh. But the figure of Osiris is rigid and unmoving, a mummy shrouded and artfully painted. In other words, although he is a mighty king, Osiris is still subject to the fate of humankind. Like his subjects, he too had to die. It was on the fact that this destiny was shared that the great hope of Ani the scribe and his contemporaries was based.

According to Egyptian legend, the good king Osiris had an enemy, his brother Set. Set lay in wait for Osiris, seized him and killed him. He cut up the body and threw the parts into the Nile. But Isis, the wife of Osiris (in our picture she is standing guard behind the throne with her sister Nephthys), went in search of him. "Woefully she roved the land, never resting until she had found him."

Jackal-headed Anubis re-assembled the fourteen parts of the corpse, bound them in shrouds, and thus created the first mummy. Isis metamorphosed into a kite and "created the air with her wings". At this the dead god began to revive. And, while he could no longer resume his first life on earth, he was able to embark on a second. Thus he became the king of the underworld: "Now grief is at an end, and laughter returns." This comforting myth of the conquest of death and the possibility of a second, fresh beginning meets a deep-seated need in mortal humanity. So the meeting of the deceased with Osiris constitutes one of the most significant moments in the book of the dead. The Egyptians believed that, in the divine order of things, everything was repeated, and that anyone must therefore be able to repeat what happened to Osiris. Every mortal hoped that magic would assist him to become one with Osiris, that he might be resurrected into a new and different existence. From the start, the book of the dead refers to the scribe as "Osiris Ani", meaning that this mortal has become Osiris, and trusts that this will place the deceased under the protection of the god of resurrection.

But even Osiris could not protect Ani from all the dangers that threatened him. In the afterlife there were abysses, demons and terrors, reflecting the primeval fears rooted in the human spirit, phenomena that even a deity would go in fear of. A considerable number of them are still in Ani's way as he journeys on. The remaining thirty-five leaves of the book of the dead try to familiarize him with these dangers. They provide him with expertise, prayers and spells that will conduct him safely to the paradisal "fields of the rushes", that place "where every wish is fulfilled". There, Ani will be able to "drink his jug of beer every evening" in perpetuity, or accompany the gods by day as the barque of the sun crosses the heavens. The gates of the great beyond are open to him. Ani can go on, out into the day.