page_title: Book of the Dead
section_title: Egyptian concepts of death and afterlife
hierarchical_section_title: Book of the Dead / Egyptian concepts of death and afterlife
caption_attribution_description: Vignett til kapittel 30B av Dødeboken A Section of Plate 3 from the Papyrus of Ani. The Papyrus of Ani is a version of the Book of the Dead for the Scribe Ani. Plate 3 contains half of the first (and longer) instance of Chapter 30B in Ani's Book of the Dead. The title of Chapter 30B is: Chapter For Not Letting Ani's Heart Create Opposition Against Him, in the Gods' Domain.
context_page_description: The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BCE. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw, is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light. "Book" is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts consisting of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife and written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years.
  The Book of the Dead, which was placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased, was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts, which were painted onto objects, not written on papyrus. Some of the spells included in the book were drawn from these older works and date to the 3rd millennium BCE. Other spells were composed later in Egyptian history, dating to the Third Intermediate Period.
context_section_description: The spells in the Book of the Dead depict Egyptian beliefs about the nature of death and the afterlife. The Book of the Dead is a vital source of information about Egyptian beliefs in this area.
caption: A vignette in The Papyrus of Ani, from Spell 30B: Spell For Not Letting Ani's Heart Create Opposition Against Him, in the Gods' Domain, which contains a depiction of the ba of the deceased
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