新东方新托福听力特训The Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead is the name given by Egyptologists to a collection of chapters
made up of groups of spells, incantations, and mummification techiniques. This book
was designed to help the deceased live a happy afterlife in "heaven". The book was
supposed to be read by the deceased during their journey into the Underworld.It is
New Kingdom text, which is similar to many texts found in the pyranmids. The texts
found in the pyramids are classified as the Old Kingdome text, and the text found in
Egyptian coffins are classified as the Middle Kingdom text.Both texts outline the
ceremony performed at the funeral of an important person. The movies have led us to
believe that we should not read from The Book of the Dead, but in fact ,the book
needed to be read by ancient Egyptians interested in an afterlife. To put it in modern
terms, think about how modern religious rituals are run.You go to your place of
worship, and rituals and holy texts are read out to you from a book. In Ancient Egypt,
these burial rituals weren't immediately read from a book. At first ,they were read
directly off the walls of their chambers of a pyramid and later were read directly off
the sides of the coffins. The Book of the Dead was read off of papyrus sheets, much as
religious rituals today are read out of books. Like some modern day holy books, The
Book of the Dead was meant to be relatively cheap to purchase, unlike buying a
pyramid or a coffin. This would ensure that any fairly well-off person could buy a
hand-written copy of the book and use it on a loved one. if you were an Egypian with
a fair bit of money in the Neq Kingdom, you would buy a copy of the book that would
have blanks where the name of the loved one should be placed. Then all you had to do
was hire someone called a scribe to write the name in all the blank spots.