CLXXXVI. _Adoration to Hathor, the lady of the 376│ LX, LXII.

West, falling down before Mehurit._ │




INTRODUCTION.


When, in the year 1892, Sir Peter Le Page Renouf began the publication
of his translation of the Book of the Dead, his intention was that the
work, once completed, should be preceded by an elaborate Introduction,
giving, besides all the information concerning the form and the history
of the book, his views as to its sense and its religious value.

As with the unfinished part of the translation,[1] so here, we are left
without any notes or any clue whatever as to the form which this
introduction was to have taken, and we are obliged to resort to the
fifth of the Hibbert lectures, given by Renouf in 1879, in order to know
his views about the book.[2]

Before speaking of its contents, we have to state briefly under what
form the book has come down to us. It is hardly necessary to repeat that
it is no book at all in the ordinary sense of the word. It is neither a
unity nor a whole, it is a collection which has grown by degrees, at
various epochs. Undoubtedly part of it goes back as far as the Old
Empire; the texts of the Middle Empire show already that there were
various editions, and we are forced to admit that its origin is not much
later than the beginning of Egyptian civilization, as we see that some
of the rubrics attribute certain chapters to a king of the 1st dynasty.
In the course of centuries the original text was modified and enlarged,
new chapters were added, revisions were made, without casting these
detached fragments into a whole. The various parts of the book were
always independent, like the Hebrew Psalms; the acceptance of a chapter
does not necessarily imply the acceptance of the next chapter, and it
seems as if the relatives of the deceased chose in the collection which
was at their disposal what they liked best, and the number of chapters
which corresponded to the price they wished to pay for a papyrus.

This description applies chiefly to the texts of the Book of the Dead of
the period prior to the XXVIth dynasty. Under the Saïte kings it seems
that a complete revision of the text was made; a definite order was
adopted, which was not rigidly binding on the writers, but to which they
generally adhered; various chapters were added, especially the last
ones, 162-165, which are never found in the older copies. It seems also
that something like what we should call an authorized version was
adopted; and this was done by men to whom the book was hardly
intelligible. A great many glosses were introduced, which were copied
afterwards in all the hieroglyphic and hieratic texts. Although we do
not find the strict accuracy of Hebrew manuscripts, the number of
variants in the Saïte, Ptolemaïc or Roman texts is considerably smaller
than in the manuscripts of the Theban period, and a collation of the
hundreds of papyri of late epoch which fill our museums would lead to no
great result.

However, it is from a text generally considered as Saïtic, but which I
believe to be of the Ptolemaïc epoch, that the Book of the Dead has been
first made known in all its extent. In 1842 Lepsius published the long
papyrus in the Turin Museum, a document which he called “the largest
piece of Egyptian literature which has been preserved.”

Before him Champollion had seen it, and had noticed that a great number
of repetitions of the same text existed in various museums. He made use
of it in his grammar, quoted here and there a sentence taken from it,
but he did not make a special study of the document. Lepsius understood
at once the importance of the book, which was the _vade-mecum_ of the
deceased, and seeing how much more extensive the Turin Papyrus was than
the short copies which had been published before, he traced the whole
document and published it two years afterwards.

Lepsius gave to this work the name of _Todtenbuch_, “Book of the Dead,”
in opposition to the name of “Ritual” adopted by Champollion, which is
certainly incorrect. It is no Ritual; a few chapters with a ritualistic
character have been introduced into it; for instance, the chapter
connected with the ceremony of “opening the mouth of the deceased,”
which is occasionally met with, or Chapter 171, “chapter of wrapping up
(the deceased) in a pure garment;” but these are rare exceptions. On the
whole the Book of the Dead differs widely from a Ritual. It is not the
priest who speaks, there are no minute prescriptions as to how a
ceremony is to be performed; all the prayers and hymns are put in the
deceased’s mouth, it is he whose speech is supposed to be heard in the
other world.

_Todtenbuch_, Book of the Dead, is not a translation of the Egyptian
title, which is: book of ⁂⁂⁂⁂⁂ _pert m hru_. As Renouf
says, “Three simple words, perfectly unambiguous when taken singly, but
by no means easy of explanation when taken together without a context;”
and in fact at the present day no final translation has been given of
these three words. Renouf translates, “coming forth by day,” as will be
seen in the numerous examples which occur in this volume; but several
objections may be raised against this interpretation, to which we should
prefer, “coming out of the day,” the day being the period of a man’s
life, having its morning and its evening.

The book is divided into fragments called ⁂, to each of which Lepsius
has given a number, following the order of the great Turin Papyrus, and
which he calls chapters. Although his numbering is not quite correct, it
has been adhered to in all the subsequent editions.

In his lecture[3] on the Book of the Dead, Renouf insists on the
difficulty of translating it: “Nothing can exceed the simplicity and the
brevity of the sentences; and yet the difficulties which a translator
has to overcome are very great. In the first place, the text is
extremely corrupt. The unsatisfactory condition of the text is owing to
different causes. The reasons which writers on Hebrew, Greek or Latin
palæography have enumerated for the purpose of accounting for mistakes
in manuscripts, apply with much greater force to the funereal
manuscripts of the Egyptians; for as these were not intended to be seen
by any mortal eye, but to remain for ever undisturbed in the tomb, the
unconscientious scribe had no such check upon his carelessness as if his
work were liable to be subjected to the constant inspection of the
living. But the most conscientious scribe might easily commit numerous
errors. Many of them are to be traced to a confusion between signs which
resemble each other in the cursive, or as it is called, the hieratic
character, but not in hieroglyphic writing.

“Besides the errors of copyists, there are different readings, the
origin of which is to be traced to the period during which the chapters
were handed down by word of mouth only. There are copies which bear
evidence that a critical choice has been made between the different
readings of a passage, but the common practice was to admit the
inconsistent readings into the text itself....

“Some of the variants have unquestionably arisen from the difficulty of
understanding the ancient texts. I have no doubt whatever that some of
the chapters of the Book of the Dead were as obscure to Egyptians living
under the eleventh dynasty as they are to ourselves.... The most
accurate knowledge of the Egyptian vocabulary and grammar will however
not suffice to pierce the obscurity arising from what M. de Rougé called
symbols or allegories, which are in fact simple mythological allusions.
The difficulty is not in literally translating the text, but in
understanding the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar words.”

These words of Renouf have still a very great force, although in the
last twenty years some progress has been made towards a better
understanding of the text. When Renouf gave the above description of the
difficulties of the translation, the main source from which he could
derive his information was what he called “the corrupt Turin text.”
Since then a critical edition has been made.[4] It is based on texts of
the XVIIIth and XIXth dynasties, written at a time when the intelligence
of the book was not lost to the same extent as under the Saïtes or the
Ptolemies, as may be ascertained from the considerable number of glosses
introduced into the Turin text which are absent from the older versions.
This edition has been compiled from various papyri, as the older ones
are much shorter than the later ones; it is not a single document like
Lepsius’s _Todtenbuch_; most of the chapters have been found in their
old form; a few are missing, but a good number have been added to the
list which have fallen out of the late versions. Generally it is from
this critical text that Renouf made his translation. Occasionally he may
choose an older version from a tomb, or perhaps a papyrus of the British
Museum, but he hardly ever reverts to the Turin _Todtenbuch_ unless he
has no other resource at his disposal.

Nevertheless the difficulties which Renouf enumerates are only partly
removed. We are still very far from being able to give a final
translation of the Book of the Dead, and I have no doubt that Renouf
would repeat about his own work what he says of Dr. Birch’s translation,
“Many parts of it, where most faithful to the original, must in
consequence of that very fidelity be utterly unintelligible to an
English reader.”

No doubt Renouf’s translation is a great step towards making the book
more intelligible; still the reader may often stumble over sentences out
of which it is hardly possible to make a reasonable sense, in spite of
their grammatical correctness, and which at first sight will seem
childish, not to say, with Renouf, “outrageous nonsense.” But we may say
with certainty that they were not so to the old Egyptians. Under this
extraordinary or even ridiculous garment may be hidden some very simple,
or even elementary truths. Let us remember that we have not yet
unravelled all the intricacies of the Egyptian mythology, which plays
such an important part in the book. Moreover, we only begin now to
understand how the Egyptians expressed abstract ideas. When we speak of
passion, shame, remorse, hope, we have so thoroughly lost sight of the
concrete element in these words, that we are apt to forget that
originally they must have been metaphors, and that they must have
expressed something striking the senses, and connected with the material
world. An instance will illustrate the difficulty in this translation.