Title: The Egyptian Book of the Dead (The Book of Coming Forth by Day) Author: Anonymous/Traditional (compiled by priestly scribes over centuries) Creation Date: c. 1550 BCE onward (New Kingdom compilations; individual spells much older) Location: Egypt
Summary
The Book of the Dead is not a single authored text but a collection of nearly 200 spells, hymns, prayers, and incantations designed to guide the deceased through the perils of the Egyptian underworld (Duat) and into eternal life. Its Egyptian title, "The Book of Coming Forth by Day," captures its purpose: to ensure the dead person emerges from darkness into the light of immortality. The spells address specific dangers — hostile serpents, lakes of fire, gatekeepers demanding passwords — and culminate in the Weighing of the Heart, where the deceased's heart is balanced against the feather of Ma'at (truth/justice) before Osiris and forty-two divine judges.
The text is deeply personal: each copy was customised for its owner, with their name inserted throughout. It includes the famous "Negative Confession," in which the dead person declares all the sins they did not commit. Illustrated papyrus scrolls, sometimes stretching to extraordinary lengths, accompanied the body into the tomb. It is simultaneously a guidebook, a prayer book, and one of humanity's most elaborate literary confrontations with death.
Why This Book Matters
No civilisation invested more thought, art, and resources in the problem of death than ancient Egypt. The Book of the Dead is the fullest expression of that obsession. Its vision of a moral afterlife — where one's deeds are weighed and judged — anticipates themes found in later religious traditions. Whether this represents direct influence or parallel development remains debated, but the Weighing of the Heart is the earliest known detailed depiction of posthumous moral judgment. As literature, it offers an unparalleled window into how an entire civilisation imagined the boundary between life and death.
Historical Context
The Book of the Dead evolved from earlier funerary traditions: the Pyramid Texts (c. 2400 BCE, reserved for royalty) and the Coffin Texts (c. 2100 BCE, extended to nobility). By the New Kingdom (c. 1550 BCE onward), these spells were democratised — any Egyptian who could afford a papyrus scroll could possess them. This reflects a profound social transformation: the afterlife, once the exclusive privilege of kings, was now available to all who lived justly. The texts continued to be produced throughout the Ptolemaic period (c. 332–30 BCE).
Literary Significance
The Book of the Dead contains some of the most powerful poetry of the ancient world. The hymns to Osiris and Ra are sublime in their imagery. The Negative Confession is a remarkable literary device — defining virtue by systematically naming every vice one has avoided. The vividness of the underworld geography, with its gates, fields, and terrifying guardians, created an imaginative tradition that influenced Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy, and every subsequent literary descent into the afterlife. The accompanying illustrations — particularly the judgment scenes — are among the most iconic images in world art.
Research Notes
Included to represent the Egyptian funerary literary tradition, which is one of the most distinctive contributions of any ancient civilisation. Faulkner's translation remains the scholarly standard. For a more accessible introduction, John H. Taylor's Journey Through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (British Museum, 2010) pairs text with illustrations. The "book" is really an anthology, and no two surviving copies contain exactly the same selection of spells, which raises interesting questions about what constitutes a "text" in the ancient world.
The Reading
Here begin the spells of going out into the day, the praises and recitations for going to and fro in the realm of the dead which are beneficial in the beautiful West, and which are to be spoken on the day of burial and of going in after going out. So the first roll opens, and so the priests recite over the coffin of the man whose name is written in red along its margin — Osiris N, true of voice — for the rolls are not a single book but an anthology of nearly two hundred spells, hymns, prayers, and incantations, copied for him alone, his name slotted into each utterance so the magic will find him and no other. The Egyptians who composed these papyri did not call them the Book of the Dead. They called them Pert em Hru — the Book of Coming Forth by Day. The dead man is not to lie down; the dead man is to come forth, radiant, into the light of the sun. What is written here is the manual of that coming forth.
The Opening of the Mouth
The body has been washed, anointed, wrapped in linen, laid in its painted coffin. The mourners follow it across the river to the western desert where the tombs are cut. At the door of the tomb the priests halt the procession. They lift the iron adze. They touch it to the mouth of the mummy, to the eyes, to the ears, to the nostrils. The mouth that was closed in death is opened. The eyes that were sealed are unsealed. The dead may now speak. The dead may now see. The dead may now breathe and eat in the country to which he is going. He is no longer a corpse. He is a traveller, equipped.
He stands at the threshold. Beneath the earth lies the Duat, the hidden country through which Ra the sun-god travels every night in his solar barque, sinking at evening behind the western mountain, rising at dawn from the eastern horizon, twelve hours of darkness between, and twelve gates, and the dead must pass through each of them. To pass, the dead must know the names. Names of gods, names of gates, names of the serpents that coil in the dark, names of the boats of the sun. In this country to know a name is to have power over the thing named. The roll in his hand is a book of names. He has read it. He carries it with him.
The Hymns to Ra
Hail to you, Ra, at your rising, you who rise in the horizon. Hail to you in your beauty, in your glory, in your power. You cross the sky, and every face watches your course. You pass from sight, and none can describe your shining. When you set in the mountain of the west, you illumine the land of the dead. The denizens of the underworld receive your light.
So he sings. So the hymns rise in him as the procession halts and he stands alone at the lip of the Duat. Ra dies each evening and is reborn each dawn. What Ra does, the dead man would do also. He would step into the solar barque. He would ride with the god through the twelve hours of the night. He would rise with the god at the eastern gate, and he would do this not once but every day, for ever, joined to the cycle that the sun enacts above the world. The Duat is not a place of rest. It is a place of becoming. He is here to become.
The Perils of the Hidden Country
The country is terrible. Lakes of fire, venomous serpents, demons with knives, rivers that cannot be crossed, gates that will not open. The dead man advances and they rise against him, and at each one he opens the roll and reads the spell that names them, and at each one the danger withdraws.
Spell Seven: the spell for passing by the coil of the serpent Apophis, the great chaos-serpent, the enemy of Ra, who lurks in the darkness waiting to swallow the sun. He must know how to repel him. Get back, he says. Crawl away. Get away from me. You shall not come against me, for I live by Ma'at. I have not committed evil. You shall not appear to me, for I know you. I know your name.
Spell Seventeen, longest and densest of the spells, takes the form of question and answer, as a master examines a pupil. Who is this? What does this mean? Atum the self-created emerged from the waters of Nun, alone in the formless deep, and brought forth from his own body the first gods. So the dead man recites, and by reciting takes his place within the act of creation itself — for to know the story is to participate in the power that made the world.
Spell Thirty-three: the spell for driving off a snake. Spell Thirty-five: the spell to prevent the deceased from being eaten by a snake in the God's Domain. Spell Thirty-nine: the spell for driving off the serpent in the God's Domain. The country is full of serpents. Each has a name. Each name is in the roll, and each spell commands the named thing to retreat. Other creatures lurk in the dark — Spell Thirty-six, against the apshai, the flesh-eating beetle that fastens on the body of the dead. He names the beetle. The beetle retreats.
Spell Fifty-nine is for breathing air and having power over water — the bare necessities of life, which he must secure anew in this country as if he were born for the first time. The sycamore tree of Nut the sky-goddess leans down to him out of the dark. She offers her shade. She offers her water. He drinks. He breathes. He goes on.
The Transformations
Some spells do not defend him. Some spells change him.
Spell Seventy-seven: the spell for being transformed into a golden falcon. I have appeared as a great falcon. I have come forth from the horizon. The falcon is the form of Horus the living king of the gods. To take the form of the falcon is to take divinity into the body.
Spell Seventy-eight: the spell for being transformed into a divine falcon.
Spell Eighty-one: the spell for being transformed into a lotus. I am this pure lotus which went forth from the sunshine, which is at the nose of Ra. I have descended that I may seek it for Horus. I am the pure one who issued from the fen.
Spell Eighty-three: the spell for being transformed into a phoenix, the benu-bird. I am the benu-bird, the soul of Ra, the guide of the gods to the underworld.
Spell Eighty-four: into a heron. Spell Eighty-five: into a living soul, so as not to enter the place of slaughter. Spell Eighty-six: into a swallow. Spell Eighty-seven: into a serpent. Spell Eighty-eight: into a crocodile.
These are not metaphors. The man who lies wrapped in the coffin wishes to become these creatures. He is not one fixed self but a shape-shifter, taking the shape the hour requires, falcon to fly above the danger, lotus to rise out of the fen, serpent to enter the narrow gates. The country before him is not a static heaven of reward. It is a journey requiring intelligence, knowledge, and the capacity to change.
The Hall of the Two Truths
The country opens. He enters a great hall. It is the Hall of the Two Truths, the Hall of Ma'at, and at its far end sits Osiris the lord of the dead, enthroned with the crook and flail in his crossed hands, his face green as new vegetation, the Atef crown upon his head, its white central column flanked by ostrich feathers. Forty-two divine assessors line the walls. Each one has a name. Each one is the judge of a particular sin.
In the centre of the hall stands a great balance. The dead man's heart is taken from his breast and laid upon one pan of the scale. On the other pan a single feather is placed — the feather of Ma'at, the goddess of truth, justice, and the cosmic order by which the world is held in being. The ibis-headed god Thoth stands beside the scale with a scribe's palette in his hand, ready to record. Beneath the scale crouches the monster Ammit, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus, mouth open. If the heart weighs heavy with sin against the feather, Ammit will eat it, and the man will cease to exist. Not punishment. Annihilation. The second death, from which there is no return.
Before the weighing, the dead man must speak. He must make the great declaration of innocence — the catalogue of what he has not done. He stands before Osiris and the assessors and he begins.
I have not done falsehood against men. I have not impoverished my associates. I have not done wrong in the Place of Truth. I have not learned that which is not. I have not done evil. I have not daily made labour in excess of what was due to be done for me. I have not brought forward my name for exaltation. I have not mistreated servants. I have not belittled a god. I have not deprived the orphan of his property. I have not done what the gods abominate. I have not caused harm to a servant by his master. I have not caused pain. I have not made anyone hungry. I have not made anyone weep. I have not killed. I have not commanded to kill. I have not made suffering for anyone. I have not diminished the food-offerings in the temples. I have not damaged the bread of the gods. I have not taken the cakes of the dead. I have not copulated illicitly. I have not been unchaste. I have not added to the weight of the balance. I have not falsified the plummet of the scales. I have not taken milk from the mouths of children. I have not driven cattle from their pasturage. I have not snared the birds of the gods. I have not caught fish in their marshes. I have not held up the water in its season. I have not built a dam against running water. I have not quenched a fire when it should burn. I have not neglected the days of meat-offerings. I have not turned away cattle from the property of the gods. I have not stopped a god in his procession.
I am pure. I am pure. I am pure. I am pure.
So he names the things he has not done. So he defines his life by its abstentions. The catalogue is wide as the Nile and narrow as a single household, and the cosmos turns on both — on murder and on the cake of the dead, on the killing of a man and on the milk of children, on the great offerings in the temples and on the small unblocked channel of running water. Justice in this country is not abstract. It is the sum of every small act by which a man either upheld Ma'at or broke her, and the heart upon the scale knows which.
The scale moves. The pan with the heart and the pan with the feather come level. Thoth lifts his palette. He writes the verdict. True of voice. The dead man is justified. Horus, falcon-headed, takes him by the hand and leads him across the floor of the hall and presents him before the throne of Osiris. Osiris inclines his green face. The man passes through.
The Field of Reeds
Beyond the hall lies the Sekhet Aaru, the Field of Reeds — the country the blessed dead inhabit, which is Egypt itself made perfect. Spell One Hundred and Ten unrolls it before him: green fields, fat canals, eternal warmth, the barley five cubits high, the emmer wheat seven cubits high, plots of land assigned to him by the gods, waterways flowing with sweet water, cool breezes off the river. He ploughs. He sows. He reaps. But there is no sweat in the labour, no aching back, no failed flood, no famine. The small figurines that were buried with him — the ushabtis — answer when the gods call for work in the new country. He himself may rest. He eats and drinks in the presence of Osiris. The country beyond death looks like the Nile Valley in the best of years, which is to say it looks like heaven.
The Last Spells
The spells go on. They do not climb to a single climax. They accumulate. Spell One Hundred and Forty-eight provides food for him — bread, beer, oxen, fowl, every good and pure thing — that he may eat for ever. Spell One Hundred and Fifty-one protects the mummy in its painted shrine, ringed by the four sons of Horus and by Anubis the jackal-headed embalmer, so that no thief, no serpent, no dampness, no decay may touch what lies wrapped within. Spell One Hundred and Sixty-two is for causing heat to be under the head of the deceased, lest the long cold of the tomb seep into him. Each spell secures one corner of his eternity.
Spell One Hundred and Seventy-five is the strangest of all. In it the dead man speaks to Atum, the self-created god from whom the world emerged, and the dead man asks what shall happen when all this is over — when the last age comes to its end. Atum answers him. The mountains, Atum says, will sink. The temples will fall. The names of the gods themselves will dissolve. The waters of Nun, out of which Atum first arose, will rise again and cover everything, and Atum and Osiris alone will remain, transformed back into serpents in the formless deep. It is the calmest apocalypse in any literature — the world returning, with great gentleness, to the water from which it came.
But that is far away. For now the dead man rises. He has done what is required. He has known the names. He has spoken the words. He has been weighed and found true. He has been transformed into falcon and into lotus, and he has eaten with Osiris in the green field. The seal of the tomb holds. The sun lifts over the eastern hills. The mouth that was opened with the adze opens now of itself, and from the painted coffin in the desert there comes forth into the day, radiant, equipped, immortal, the one whose name is written in red along the margin of the roll — Osiris N, true of voice, who lives for ever and ever.
The Book of Coming Forth by Day has done, at last, its work.
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The scholarly standard is Raymond O. Faulkner's The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (British Museum Press, 1972; current edition 2010). For a more accessible introduction, John H. Taylor's Journey Through the Afterlife (Harvard University Press, 2013) pairs text with illustrations. No two surviving copies contain exactly the same selection of spells — the "book" is really an anthology, and what constitutes a "text" in the ancient world is itself an open question.
By Raymond O. Faulkner. The scholarly standard, with photographs of the original vignettes from the Papyrus of Ani.
By John H. Taylor. A more accessible introduction — pairs the text with stunning illustrations from the British Museum's collection.
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