“Relations of the Dead: Use and Disuse of Ancient Egyptian Funerary Books” - Chana Algarvio
Channel: Bibliographical Society of Canada
Date: 2021-06-25

Chana Algarvio, University of Toronto

‘Going Forth by Day,’ or famously known by the nineteenth-century term, Book of the Dead, isa compilation of spells written on papyrus designed to guide the deceased into the afterlife andachieve rebirth through divine transfiguration. It served as the funerary rituals, recited by lectorpriests before and during burial, and then entombed with the deceased—effectively going intodisuse. Spell 148 states “this [papyrus] roll is a secret. Nobody is to know it. It is not to be toldto anyone, no one is to see it, no ear is to hear it…except [the owner] and his teacher” (Teeter2011, 31), making it clear that the book’s contents remained a mystery to the living, the secretknowledge of the spells reserved solely for the dead. Most non-Egyptologists do not know,however, that the Book of the Dead belongs to a long history of funerary literature, being thethird edition of guidebooks composed. Its predecessor was the Coffin Texts written on woodencoffins, which derived from the Pyramid Texts written on royal tomb walls, and their objectiveremained the same for millennia. Though these books went into disuse after burial, theycontinuously served a spiritual purpose through magic as their recitation activated the spellsfor eternity. By examining Egyptian book culture through funerary literature (challengingWestern notions of the book), and the role of magic in Egyptian ideology, it is apparent that thefunerary books’ state of disuse subsequently created an intangible form of book use: agency.