technologia: Book of the Dead

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

The Book of the Dead is the name given to an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC. "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. In 1842, the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius introduced for these texts the German name Todtenbuch (modern spelling Totenbuch), translated to English as 'Book of the Dead'. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m…

Evidence: 34 • authority: 88

The Transition from the Coffin Texts to the Book of the Dead. Abstract The Coffin Texts (CT) and the Book of the Dead (BD) are linked in manifold ways. The Pyramid Texts (PT) will mostly be disregarded in the following since only a few of those spells were included into the repertoire of the BD, and even these were only included through the CT. Concerning the CT, the remarks in this chapter generally refer to those texts that were designated as CT for scholarly reasons (for some general remarks on the origins of the BD compare Dorman, 2017: 29–39). Numerous connections and correspondences occur as spells from the earlier text corpus (CT) were selected and edited for the later collection of…

Evidence: 24 • authority: 88

Epilogue. Abstract This Epilogue examines the later reception of ancient Greek Underworld scenes across time and cultural contexts and reaffirms the methodology of treating Underworld scenes as hypertextual commentaries. This chapter shows the persistence and stability of Greek Underworld scenes as a locus of embedded authorial commentary. Using examples from Vergil’s Underworld scene in Aeneid 6 and Lucian’s satirical dialogues involving the dead (e.g., the True History, Dialogues of the Dead, and Downward Journey), this Epilogue reflects on the long use of Underworld scenes to give sharp social and political commentaries by couching criticism and propaganda in mythological and literary te…

Evidence: 24 • authority: 88

Book of the Dead, Book of the Living: BD Spells as Temple Texts ^*. Several temples, both of the New Kingdom as well as of the Graeco-Roman period, contain spells from the Book of the Dead among their decoration. The present paper gathers all the attestations and discusses their significance in a temple context. This leads to new insights on the origins and meanings of the respective spells in general.

Evidence: 20 • authority: 88

World and Underworld. Abstract Chapter 5 shows how leaders, authors, and artists in fifth-century bce Athens used Underworld scenes to democratize the afterlife. From ghosts on stage in Aeschylus’ Persians and Aristophanes’ Frogs to grave stelai accompanying public funeral orations for the war dead, Underworld scenes created more points of contact between the living and the dead in everyday civic spaces to reinforce political narratives defining Athenian identity. Underworld scenes across media in this period not only questioned the finality of death but also made the barrier between the living and the dead more permeable with the result that a blessed, Golden Age–type afterlife was perceiv…