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: 39 • authority: 72

Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs were centered around a variety of complex rituals that were influenced by many aspects of Egyptian culture. Religion was a major contributor, since it was an important social practice that bound all Egyptians together. For instance, many of the Egyptian gods played roles in guiding the souls of the dead through the afterlife. With the evolution of writing, religious ideals were recorded and quickly spread throughout the Egyptian community. The solidification and commencement of these doctrines were formed in the creation of afterlife texts which illustrated and explained what the dead would need to know in order to complete the journey safely. Egyptian rel…

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: 72

The afterlife or life after death is a speculation concerning existence after death, in which the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness or identity continues to exist after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, which carries with it one's personal identity. In some views, this continued existence takes place in a supernatural realm, while in others, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again in a process referred to as reincarnation, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such…

Evidence: 24 • authority: 72

The Duat or Tuat (Ancient Egyptian: Hieroglyph: 𓇽 romanized: dwꜣt) is a concept in ancient Egyptian mythology involving death. It is most often seen as a realm where people go after they die. Due to linguistic shifts within Ancient Egypt, the Duat has also been called Te (Coptic: Ⲧⲏ, romanized: Tē) and Amenthes (Ancient Greek: Ἀμένθης, romanized: Aménthēs). What is known of the Duat derives principally from funerary texts such as the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Coffin Texts, the Amduat, and the Book of the Dead, among many other sources. It is generally known best as a dark subterranean realm that not only houses the deceased, but a variety of deities. Common deities depicted i…

Evidence: 20 • authority: 92

<i>FIAT LUX</i>: The Mullein's (<i>Verbascum</i> sp.) Image and Its Symbology Through History Within the Euro-Mediterranean Culture.. The plant's representation had, in the past, a great symbolic relevance, which is now often neglected. The presence and significance of mullein ( Verbascum sp.) in Euro-Mediterranean art have been investigated, but despite its iconographic importance, a wide analysis of its value and recurrence is lacking. Through a survey of over 5000 artworks, from ancient to modern age, combining digital museum collections and fieldwork, we identified about hundred depictions of Verbascum , 64 of which are here reported for the first time. Based on…

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…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), which mostly consist of the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish biblical manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of ten years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea and some nearby places. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the various Jewish and Christian biblical canons, including deuterocanonical manuscripts from late Second Temple Judaism, as well as extrabiblical books. As such, they cast new light on the emergence o…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Ancient Egypt was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in the eastern part of North Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower Egypt were united by Menes, who is believed by the majority of Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by the "Intermediate Periods" of relative instability. These stable kingdoms existed in one of three periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age; the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age; or the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age. The pin…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Book of the Dead is a long narrative poem written by Muriel Rukeyser, appearing in her collection US 1. Published in 1938, the poem deals with the Hawks Nest Tunnel disaster (also known as the Gauley Tunnel Tragedy) in which predominantly poor, migrant mine workers in Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, were afflicted by the occupational mining disease silicosis. Over the course of twenty poems, beginning with "The Road" and ending with "The Book of the Dead," Rukeyser takes her readers on a journey into the disaster. The poem mixes and intersperses, in a modernist and documentary manner, testimony from the disaster, lines from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, and lines from the Biblica…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

The Book of the Dead is a long narrative poem written by Muriel Rukeyser, appearing in her collection US 1. Published in 1938, the poem deals with the

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Egyptian afterlife beliefs. The Book of the Dead and Coffin Texts were collections of spells and prayers to protect the dead from the Duat's dangerous