Egyptian
An Egyptian hieratic inscribed linen fragment from the Book of the Dead, Ptolemaic, circa 3rd - 2nd century BC
Linen
Length overall: 73.6 cm
The fragment preserving part of chapter 158 of the Book of the Dead, the large hieratic characters written with rapid brush strokes from right to left and reading 'spell to...
The fragment preserving part of chapter 158 of the Book of the Dead, the large hieratic characters written with rapid brush strokes from right to left and reading 'spell to be recited over a collar of gold, upon which this spell is written, placed at the throat...' The fragment composed of two sections mounted and framed horizontally.
Provenance
Paul Lutz Collection, USA, 1970sWith Charles Ede Limited, London, circa 2003
UK private collection, acquired from the above
Literature
The Book of the Dead is the modern term for a collection of about two hundred ancient Egyptian mortuary texts made up of spells or magic formulas, which were placed in tombs and believed to protect and aid the deceased in the hereafter. Many copies of the book have been found in Egyptian tombs, but none contains all of the approximately 200 known chapters. In 1842 Richard Lepsius assigned numbers 1-165 in his edition of the papyrus of Iufankh (Egyptian Museum Turin). Further numbers were subsequently added by other scholars. The funerary texts are written in hieroglyphs or in hieratic (cursive hieroglyphs) as in this example.Chapter 158 is a short spell to be recited over an ornamental broad collar of gold, put around the deceased's neck at interment. See C. Andrews, Egyptian Mummies, Harvard, 1984, p. 38; J.H. Taylor, Journey through the Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, The British Museum, 2010.