Before him Champollion had seen it, and had noticed that a great number
of repetitions of the same text existed in various museums. He made use
of it in his grammar, quoted here and there a sentence taken from it,
but he did not make a special study of the document. Lepsius understood
at once the importance of the book, which was the _vade-mecum_ of the
deceased, and seeing how much more extensive the Turin Papyrus was than
the short copies which had been published before, he traced the whole
document and published it two years afterwards.
Lepsius gave to this work the name of _Todtenbuch_, “Book of the Dead,”
in opposition to the name of “Ritual” adopted by Champollion, which is
certainly incorrect. It is no Ritual; a few chapters with a ritualistic
character have been introduced into it; for instance, the chapter
connected with the ceremony of “opening the mouth of the deceased,”
which is occasionally met with, or Chapter 171, “chapter of wrapping up
(the deceased) in a pure garment;” but these are rare exceptions. On the
whole the Book of the Dead differs widely from a Ritual. It is not the
priest who speaks, there are no minute prescriptions as to how a
ceremony is to be performed; all the prayers and hymns are put in the
deceased’s mouth, it is he whose speech is supposed to be heard in the
other world.
_Todtenbuch_, Book of the Dead, is not a translation of the Egyptian
title, which is: book of ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ _pert m hru_. As Renouf
says, “Three simple words, perfectly unambiguous when taken singly, but
by no means easy of explanation when taken together without a context;”
and in fact at the present day no final translation has been given of
these three words. Renouf translates, “coming forth by day,” as will be
seen in the numerous examples which occur in this volume; but several
objections may be raised against this interpretation, to which we should
prefer, “coming out of the day,” the day being the period of a man’s
life, having its morning and its evening.
The book is divided into fragments called ⁂, to each of which Lepsius
has given a number, following the order of the great Turin Papyrus, and
which he calls chapters. Although his numbering is not quite correct, it
has been adhered to in all the subsequent editions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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