The Ancients - Egypt's Book of the Dead

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

For over a thousand years, the Book of the Dead guided ancient Egyptians through the afterlife. Filled with powerful spells these remarkable texts were designed to help the dead overcome the dangers of the underworld and reach eternal life in the company of Osiris, God of the Dead.Today, Tristan Hughes is joined by Yekaterina Barbash to explore the fascinating history of the Book of the Dead. Why was it so important to ancient Egyptian burial beliefs? How were these extraordinary papyri made? And what can one of the finest surviving examples reveal about death, magic and the afterlife in ancient Egypt?MOREHieroglyphsListen on AppleListen on Spotify Treasures of TutankhamunListen on AppleListen on Spotify We're going on *TOUR* to Australia and New Zealand! - grab your tickets here.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music courtesy of Epidemic SoundsThe Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. The Book of the Dead, a hallmark type of artefact from ancient Egypt, a collection of spells designed to help guide the deceased through the underworld. Sometimes written on papyrus, other times on the mummy wrappings of the dead person themselves, these books were high fashion items in ancient Egypt for centuries. The spells they included and the quality of these books differed from tomb to tomb from century to century. And yet, many ancient Egyptians considered these guides are vital for their burials. Thousands of fragments of ancient books of the dead have been discovered,

some better preserved than others. And one such book is about to take center stage in a brand new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in the United States. Beautifully conserved and preserved, the 21-foot papyrus is a complete version, holding nearly all 162 spells known from the longest versions of the Book of the Dead. What's more, it's rich in gleaming vignettes and gilded decoration, a stunning artifact, originally owned by an Egyptian called Angmerroir over 2,000 years ago. Today, we'll explore the wider story of ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead before focusing in on this particularly special artifact with our guest, Dr. Yaciterina Barbarash, curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Welcome to the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the story of ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead. Yakaterina, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you. It's wonderful to be on the show. I'm really excited about it. Me too, and let's get straight into it. In ancient Egypt, what was the Book of the Dead? Well, the Book of the Dead was actually not a book by our modern standards. Rather, the Book of the Dead is a collection of different texts that are sometimes called spells. There are about 200 distinct texts.

And they're as a whole intended to help the spirit of a person transition into the afterlife and then continue successfully existing there. Now, the texts or spells themselves, they address a range of different topics, like protecting the body, providing nourishment, navigating the underworld, which can get quite dangerous and difficult sometimes, joining Osiris, the god of the dead,

but also repelling dangerous creatures that appear both in this, life and in the underworld. So is it almost, this is your spellbook to reach the afterlife, or your guide to the afterlife almost? I suppose you could say that. It is in many ways a guide to the afterlife. It's a guide for the spirit to navigate the afterlife, but it's also a guide for the priests and ritualists that prepare the body. So, for instance, many of the texts, included in the Book of the Dead work, likely recited during mummification. So they were recited by the living. But they also include the books of the dead, also include texts that we know were used by the living.

For instance, protective spells that are meant to protect from scorpions or snake bites. Those were deemed necessary for the afterlife as well. I love that. We're going to delve into all of that, the fact that you have animals in the afterlife as well to try and avoid. First things first, when someone says Book of the Dead, the title is so strong. It's so gripping and enticing. I mean, do we know where we get the title, Book of the Dead from? We do know where we get the title, and it's not from ancient Egypt. Actually, the title was coined by Richard Lepsius, who published one of the first. of the longest and most complete books of the dead known to him and known to many Egyptologists,

the book of the dead of U.S. Ang, which is currently in Turin, and he titled his publication, Book of the Dead. The Egyptians themselves sometimes refer to the book of the dead as something to the effect of the book or the document of going out daily or going force. daily, and that is a title that occurs on the outside of some scrolls containing Book of the Dead texts. It's also the title of some very specific texts within the Book of the Dead corpus. And that, of course, has to do with the idea of the solar cycle, because the sun, according to Egyptian beliefs, the sun dies every evening, travels through the underworld, hangs out with Osiris, there joins Osiris and becomes reborn to be born every morning. And that's ultimately what

every ancient Egyptian wants is to be reborn and travel with the sun. And so how long were books of the dead, how long were they in fashion for in ancient Egypt? So, books, books, of the dead were in fashion, I would say for probably over 1,500 years. So they became popular about 1500 BC, and they were widely used until the first century BC. And so that time period, so 1500 BC, that's the time of the new kingdom, so Tutankar moon, Bronze Age Egypt, the time you think of it at its zenith, all the way down to, well, the time. of Cleopatra after Alexander the Great, when you have the Macedonian Greeks ruling over Egypt. So it's a massive time period. Absolutely massive time period, as many things are in ancient Egypt.

Do we see a clear evolution in the design, in the style of these books of the dead? So you can easily differentiate, you can tell the difference between a book created in the New Kingdom period to one created, let's say, at the time of Cleopatra of the 7th, the book. famous Kaypatrick. That is a really good question. Because Books of the Dead aren't really like books as we understand them, so they weren't copied word for word. And almost every document is distinct. They were continuously being developed and added on. And every example, dependent on probably the fashion of the time, the choice of the owner, and very likely the the preference of the workshop creating the manuscript.

So there are two major distinct movements, sort of in the Book of the Dead, the first part, until about 700 BC, so from 1,500 to 700 or so. And then around 700 BC, Egyptian priests decided to standardize books of the dead to a certain extent. initially they belong to a longstanding tradition that actually extends over a thousand years before the first Books of the Dead appeared. But what we modern Egyptologists call Books of the Dead that corpus of text first appears

just before the New Kingdom around, I would say, 1600 BC. And so at that point, the spells in the Book of the Dead are intentionally arranged in groupings that follow an internal logic. And those groupings seem to be connected to the rituals that were performed for the deceased. So during mummification, during the burial, perhaps after the burial. And so as a result, many of the texts appear more than once in slightly different versions. And so by about 700 BC, the corpus had become quite confusing and convoluted, because it, I guess you can say, it adhered to a liturgical format. And there seems to have been a movement among priests around the 25th dynasty.

So that is actually the Kushite dynasty, 700 BC or so. And at that point, priests scribes were really pushing towards systematizing knowledge. So that's when we begin to see systematic compilations of medical information and ritual books. And of course, they looked into the very popular book of the dead corpus. and came up with a sequence that arranged all of the spells that addressed the same theme into one batch. And then the next batch would address a different theme. So all of the heart spells were together. And all of the navigating the underworld gate spells and underworld mound spells would be placed together and so on and so forth.

And so we ended up with a corpus of texts that often repeat with slight variations, one after the other. And the person ordering a Book of the Dead, or perhaps their family, although they probably did order during life, place that ordered during life, they had an option of choosing. I would like two of the hard spells to be included, that only one of the protection from scorpions and crocodiles. Well, you've mentioned papyrus a few times, so shall we explore this material? What do we mean by papyrus and what do we mean by the fact that these spells, the writing is applied to it? So most commonly, books of the dead were inscribed on papyrus, although they do appear on other materials. So, for instance, the earliest books of the dead were written on linen shrouds. Okay.

But they also, Book of the Dead texts also appear on tomb walls, on stila, so in stone. They rarely appear on leather, and certain specific spells were inscribed on figurines, on amulets, on hypocephaly, which are little round amuletic discs that were placed under the head of the mummified person. In the Ptolemaic period, they started writing Book of the Dead texts on linen mummy bandages that directly wrapped the body. But of them all, was papyrus the most important material that you find they used over these centuries? Right. Papyrus was the most common, the most common material used for books. And forgive my ignorance, so papyrus, is that made from reed? So it's easily acquireable in Egypt?

Right. In ancient times, in antiquity, papyrus was readily available. There's very little papyrus left in Egypt today. but generally it's a reed that grew close to the water, and the thick triangular-shaped stalks of the reed would be cut and flattened and then glued together with the papyrus juices, basically in perpendicular fashion. So most papyri are made out of two layers of flattened papy

pyrus fiber, which is then dried and could be used to inscribe texts, then delete texts, inscribe new texts. And, Echaterina, what are these amulets that seem to be this really fascinating part of the Book of the Dead? There are a series of spells that were meant to be recited. They begin with the title of a spell. Formula for a gold vulture placed at the neck of a transfigured spirit. So again, they're already saying that this person has become reborn.

And an image of a vulture is added in the viduette. And at the end of the recitation, there are directions for the ritualist. It explains very specifically, word spoken over the gold vulture, on which this formula is written, and it should be placed on the spirit, on the day of burial. So very specific instructions in the papyrus. Interestingly enough, the instructions do not always match what we find in archaeology. Most often, the amulets are not inscribed with that spell. Sometimes they use a totally different material.

So instead of gold, they might use stone. They were very flexible about some rules, it seems. But in regards to the amulets, you do have archaeological evidence that they did lay those down, that those instructions were followed from the Book of the Dead from particular spells. Absolutely, absolutely. There are instructions for amulets. There are instructions for, it's kind of a silly name, what we call magic bricks to be placed at at the cardinal points of tomb that are described in books of the dead,

and then examples have been found in tombs. So they actually did follow the directions, but sometimes intentionally or unintentionally change them, change the rules. When these books of the dead are deposited in the deceased's tomb, do we know how usually they're placed, how they're laid out in the tomb, Is there a particular way that they are deposited? Yes, and no. There's a choice.

Sometimes they were placed inside the coffin. Sometimes they were placed on top of the body, either as a scroll in certain periods of time, like in the third intermediate period, they would, some Book of the Dead papy were placed unrolled on top of the body. Scrolls could also be placed outside of the coffin within containers that are sometimes shaped as the Tosokar Osir's statues. What are they, Yacetarina?

So it's a combination of three gods. The Egyptian religion is broad and complicated and what I like to call morphy, because gods morph one and two another and join together. And so the god Ta, a creator god, the god Sokar, a primordial god of rebirth. And Osiris, the god of the underworld, who, according to Egyptian beliefs, was really the first entity to die, be mummified and become reborn into the afterlife. they join together into this wonderful deity that sometimes, whose images sometimes contained Book of the Dead Scrolls. And is it also correct that some books of the dead, if you look at the parchment, that some of them, or the papyrus or whatever material they're written on,

some of them could be much more decorated than others? Yes, absolutely. And again, And depending on the fashion of the time, the location, where the papyrus was made, and also how much funds a person could spend. Much money, yes. They sometimes contain only texts and sometimes were brightly decorated with brightly colored vignettes. And in a very few cases, they also have gilding. Well, that leads us nicely into this particular example that we're going to focus in on, one that I know you've done a lot of work around Yekaterina and the team at the Brooklyn Museum,

which is your extraordinary Book of the Dead now on display. First of all, how does this Book of the Dead end up in Brooklyn? Great question. So the Book of the Dead of Ankmer Ware was first acquired in Egypt by actually a British physician named Henry Abbott. He lived in Cairo and worked as a doctor and collected close to 2,000 Egyptian antiquities. He had a really good eye and was apparently friends with a lot of Egyptologists. He doesn't seem to have studied or been a scholar, so to speak, but he amassed a large collection. And in 1853, he decided to sell his collection off and he came to New York and opened, I believe it was the first exhibition of ancient Egyptian art in the U.S., which was wildly popular. Walt Whitman signed the guest book 20 times.

He loved it and became friends with Henry Abbott. Nevertheless, the collection didn't sell it, and it ended up being acquired for the New York Historical Society. And so the Book of the Dead of Ankmer Ware came to the New York Historical Society until in 1937, the New York Historical Society decided to focus on the history of New York and first went and then sold the entire collection to the Brooklyn Museum. So the Gilded Scroll was at the Brooklyn Museum, has been at the Brooklyn Museum since 19. But here's the problem. Somebody likely Dr. Henry Abbott himself or someone working for him wanted to make sure that the scroll survived. And so he first cut it into fragments and then glued it to a paper backing. And that certainly helped it stay intact. And then he's rolled it back up into a scroll. So the Pyris arrived to Brooklyn as a scroll. And when I started working here 18 years ago, I saw a scroll with about six inches with a bit of gilding sticking out. And that's all I knew about it until a few years ago when we applied for a grant, received the grant from the Bank of America to conserve it.

It's talked to us about this amazing conservation project that you and the team did to, frankly, unveil the secrets, unveil the writing, reveal the writing on this book of the dead. Oh, it was glorious. It was glorious. Because I had only seen about six inches of the scroll, I really did not have a good sense of how large it is, what it contained. And so the first unrolling had to be done on the floor because the scroll was 21 feet long. And I swear I fell to my knees and crawled around it for hours. It turned out that the Book of the Dead was complete. There was a beginning and an end.

And that was the first time in probably over 2,000 years that I was able to read the name of the owner and his mother. Well, let me rephrase that. I haven't been around for 2,000 years. It's the first time in 2000 years that anyone read the name of the owner. It's really interesting, kind of that revealing process. As you mentioned, Icarina, like the fact that you've realized that there are no missing pieces that you have here a complete copy of a book of the dead, that you're seeing the name of the person who it was for.

You know, you're one of the first people to see his name in over 2,000 years. And the writing itself, should we be thinking, is it just hieroglyphs or is it in ancient Greek or demotic? Isn't it? What language should we be thinking of? What script? It's written in the ancient Egyptian language, the Middle Egyptian specifically, but the script they used for this book of the dead, for the book of the dead of Ankmer-Ware is hieratic, which is... Basically a cursive form of hieroglyphs, and the hieratic script appeared at the same time as the hieroglyphic script. It's sort of like, if you think of capital letters versus handwritten. Right. Okay.

So basically a cursive version of hieroglyphs, which is amazing. And the fact that you have the first lines and the last lines, I must also ask, because you mentioned this earlier, how some books of the dead have almost the equivalent of a. title page or have some writing on the other side. Did it have any writing at all at the other side or was the title for this book? There is no writing on the other side. There may have been at some point, but earlier today I spoke about the two layers of papyrus. So with the manuscript of Ankmer where only the top layer remains.

It's that thin. And to be honest, I'm not sure if there ever was. another layer on the back, and it had fallen off. Perhaps Henry Abbott helped it. Perhaps he didn't, but we don't know what was on the back. I would not expect anything to be written on the back for this time period. Fair enough. Well, this figure of Ankema were, do we have any idea who he was? So what we know is that he lived around the second century BC during Ptolemaic times. He lived probably in northern Egypt. I know that because the style of decoration of this papyrus and the layout was more common in the memphite area,

which is basically around modern Cairo. We also know that his mother was named Taneferher, which means She of the Beautiful Face. And we know that he was really well off. But unfortunately, some books of the dead mention the titles of the owner. So what he did during life where he worked, there are no titles in this papyrus. And who did he have to write this book, this 21-foot-long scroll for him? So he likely, I would imagine that it was a workshop.

of scribes. Actually, I'm sure it was a scribal workshop. These scribes were likely also very much involved in the religion, so I would refer to them as priest scribes, perhaps. There's at least four different hands that can be identified in the papyrus, and we still don't know exactly how it worked, whether it was a new scribe every day or, I don't know, Hnum Holtep went to have lunch and Amanamed took over, but there are at least four different hands. Hi there, just before we return to the show, I want to pop in here to tell you about the history hit subscription and give you a taste of the exclusive content that subscribers get. Now, as a history hit subscriber, you have access to hundreds of brand-new documentary

with a new release every week, from Dan Snow exploring Maya ruins in Belize to my documentary on Petra and the Nabatians in Jordan. There's an app where you can search for any time period, for any culture or presenter. There is something for everyone. You also get, as part of the subscription, early access to all of our podcasts with no ads.

And on The Ancients, we do really value our listeners, so we also release an exclusive subscriber-only episode every two weeks. Here's a taster of one of our most recent episodes when Joseph, our producer, put the important listener questions to me. Right, next question. Is Ramesses the Great overrated? Ooh, interesting. I can see why people would think that, because his name's on absolutely everything, right? But I don't know, having visited somewhere like Abu Simple and like gazed upon those incredible colossal statues of Ramesses II, obviously, we're talking about him today and he would be very, very happy in how he's been shown today. But like, you did rule for 66 years. It's a period

in Egyptian history, you know, that maybe is not the kind of the zenith of maybe a century so earlier, but Egypt is still powerful. I think the clincher for me to probably say actually, no, I don't think so, is the fact that although, yes, his dynasty comes crashing down not long after his death, if you look at, for instance, the buildings he does, not just have his symbol on the south, but let's say his great forts in the West, it does seem that actually he does prepare Egypt to an extent, you know, to repel what will happen after his death, which is the invasion of the sea peoples. So I think he does deserve credit for that. Maybe his personal promotion puts him up to 11. However, I don't want to go so far as to kind of say

that then actually he wasn't a significant or very interesting and remarkable pharaoh. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to have to disagree with you. I think he is absolutely definitely overrated. Basically, he mounts this big propaganda campaign around the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC. And he says, oh, it's this wonderful big victory. He plasters reliefs of it of him on this battlefield on loads of different temples all around Egypt. He screams about it. He's a propaganda genius. It turns out he didn't actually win that battle. It was against the Hittites and it was a stalemate. Now to find out who wins that argument

and to listen to the rest of the episode, sign up to History Hit. Their subscriber episodes every fortnight and access to hundreds of original documentaries. That's historyhit.com slash subscribe or click the link in the show notes. Now, back to the show. Do you think that was probably the standard practice that, yeah, you know, a series of scribes would write different parts, you know, different, they'd write out different spells in a book of the dead. That's what you'd expect. So you wouldn't expect the exact same scribal hand for every single spell in the book. Interestingly enough, sometimes the handwriting changes in the middle of the spell. Ah, okay. That does occur pretty frequently with other papyri, although some texts were fully. inscribed by the same person.

And so what types of spells, though, do you get early on in the scroll like Yakaterina? So there are texts that have to do with embalning because mummification for the Egyptians created a deity. So you took a body with their spirit that could ideally travel back and forth between the worlds and made it into a divinity. And that helps the spirit achieve that transfigured status, or basically the status where they are accepted among the other gods. One of my favorite versions of Spell 125 has the god Anubis, who's a jackal or dog-headed god. He comes and brings the deceased into the court of Osiris, and he addresses the court. There's Osiris and 42 of his divine judges and a few other

gods. And Anubis says, basically, hi, everyone. This is the deceased so. And so I know he's one of you because he smells like you. It's just like what a dog would think, presumably, yeah. And is that, do you say spell 125 that, Yakaterina? Right, that's one of the versions of 125. So the earlier spells are around the funeral, around the mummification and stuff and that. And is it famous things like the opening of the mouth? Right.

There are spells that are connected to the opening of the mouth. But interestingly enough, the opening of the mouth ritual is somewhat of a separate thing. it's not actually included in the book of the dead. There are images representing the opening of the mouse in the vignettes. And then the spells that we number, as spells 21 to 23, have to do with the opening of the mouse. They're meant to basically give the deceased power over their mouths to receive food and drink, to speak, and, you know, to be able to pronounce their own name and

all of the important information that's mentioned in the later texts. And going back to the one you described earlier as well with Anubis saying he smells like, or they smell like one of them. Is it going too far to say, does that, is that spell giving a bit more characterization, a bit more of a story in that particular entry? It's quite an odd line to include to say that they're smelling the person and that he knows that he or she is one of the deceased then. Aikmer where he is one of the deceased. The Egyptian gods, I think, you know, at first glance, they seem like quite ugly-looking,

animal-headed human-bodied entities. But the animal heads are not actually representations of what the Egyptians thought, the gods looked like. They represent the qualities of that deity. So Anubis, the jacca, the canine, right? He's very protective. He can find the correct way and bleed. And he has a very keen sense of smell. And he is responsible for embalming and mummification because, you know, as the dead were embalmed and buried, usually in the West next to the desert, that's where the wild dogs and jackals hung around. So they were seen as sort of protecting the deceased and being part of that whole process. If we focus on a couple of other, I guess, well-known spells today if someone

says the book of the dead, yeah, Katrina, I think the one that instantly comes to mind for many or if they know anything about this, would be the weighing of the heart. Now, what is this? Definitely, that is the most best-known spell and probably the most recognizable Vindiget from the Book of the Dead. And it was very common in Book of the Dead manuscripts,

but also it appears on coffins, heart nage, and so on. So the weighing of the heart scene is usually attached, actually to spell 125 that I already mentioned. Ah, this is 125. Okay, let's do it. And so this is one of the ultimate goals of the deceased journey through the underworld is to get to Osiris' court. And Osiris is pictured sitting on his throne.

Ankmerer had him gilded beautifully. and there are 42 judges in the court. They're usually pictured as mammiform, so their bodies look like those of bound, embalmed bodies, and they have a variety of animal and human heads. And there's usually a large scale on which the heart of the deceased, which was the really the seat of one's consciousness. The Egyptians believed that the brain is only there to produce mucus

and quite unnecessary organ, but the heart is where your thoughts and your consciousness resided. And so the heart was typically mummified separately and ideally placed back into the body. So on one side, you would have the heart, the consciousness, of the deceased. On the other side, you would have an image of the goddess Maad, and that is personification of truth and balance and harmony. And her, entomologically, her name has to do with navigating a boat correctly. So you need to be on the right path, sort of Buddhist-like.

And so in a perfect situation, your heart, your consciousness would be in balance with Mott, with that personification of truth and the right path. It shouldn't be heavier. It shouldn't really be lighter. Now, the deceased themselves would be present during the swaying of the heart, Thoth, the god of wisdom and knowledge and writing, he's usually ibis-headed deity, and he's standing next to the weighing of the heart

and recording what's going on. And a terrible creature named the Amateur, perhaps the meaning the devourer is a combination of a crocodile lion and hippo, and if your heart is not, in balance, Ahmood would devour your heart, which would mean a second death, the worst scenario possible for an ancient Egyptian. But of course, we never see that happen in books of the dead because it's all about wishful thinking and everything turns out well.

Because in that particular spell, does it give advice as to how to make sure that that doesn't happen, that the heart isn't thrown away to this monster? Yes, it's, so in that particular spell in spell 125, the deceased is recorded as saying a declaration of innocence or sometimes called the negative confession because they list what transgressions they have not done. Like, I have not caused hunger. I haven't caused tears. I haven't killed. I haven't ordered the killing. I haven't caused pain.

I haven't added to the pad of the scales. I haven't taken milk from babies and so on and so forth. And then they address the gods. They address each of the 42 judges and proclaimed their innocence, their sort of correct and balanced life. But that's not the only spell that helps the outcome of the weighing of the heart, because there are several so-called heart spells, spell 30, for instance,

that were usually inscribed both on papyri and on large, dark green scarab-shaped amulets. And these amulets would be placed on the chest where the mummified heart was ideally. And I really like those spells, because they, they address the heart. And the spell says something to the effect of, oh, my heart, oh, the heart that my mother gave me, please don't stand witness against me in the court of Osiris. Don't say anything.

Don't say against me. He did do it. Do not create things against me before the great God. And it's just such a wonderful illustration. of how a person's consciousness is sort of separated from the person themselves, right? And basically asking the consciousness to keep quiet. I love that as well. Yeah, keep your thoughts in check so that you get past the weighing of the heart.

Yeah, Katerina, obviously there are so many spells and we can't cover them all. I would like to ask you, though, are there any particular ones that, you know, you can see in your particular copy? the Gilded copy or others that you find particularly fascinating that shine a light on one particular part of this journey, of this idea of what happened in the afterlife? It's so difficult to choose. I do love the gate spells. What are the gate spells? So the gate spells are, for instance, there could be up to 21 gates of the underworld.

and the, so the spirit is intended to pass through all of these gates, but it's not just the question of navigating the geography, the topography, because each gate has a guardian. And Books of the Dead, the Book of the Dead of Ankmer, where, as usual, depicts every gate and its guardian. And then the text explains that as you come up to each gate, you should say, I know you, I know your name, I know the name of the God guarding you. And then the names of each gate on the guardian are listed.

And that is the only way to pass. And I'm particularly partial to the gate spells because it reveals so much about the value, of knowledge and the value of being able to, I think it's quite deep thought, the value of being able to name an object or a person in a way gives you power over them. And the names of the people at the gates, are they certain demigods or deities, or are they everyday Egyptian names? No, they are definitely divinities, deities.

I suppose you can call them demons in the sense of like a minor deity. Right. Yeah. For instance, one combination of hippo and lion guardian is named the one with his mouth wide open. So you can imagine that the front end is the hippo then

with a big mouth and that's what they are. Precisely. Right. So these gatekeepers are also kind of animalistic as well. which harkens back to what you were saying earlier about how they had to get past all these various different strange animals on their journey to the weighing of the heart.

So, Yacotarina, if you have spells associated with the burial, spells associated with the gates, the weighing of the heart as well, but you mentioned how with the standardisation of them that they are kind of grouped together into certain groups, are there any other particular groups of spells that we should highlight? Well, probably protection of the body. So the body, the mummified body, is a vessel to which the person's boss spirit can come back when they're on earth as the boss spirit could travel between the world. And so protection of the body was very important in terms of keeping the body intact. And I suppose those spells do have to do with embalming, but also protecting from crocodiles and scorpions and snakes and their wonderful little scenes in the papyrus of Ahmed where next to those spells that represent a person spearing a crocodile or spearing an

enormous bug, there are also texts that place the deceased into the community of other D.A.S. And I suppose one important type of text that we haven't touched on at all are the sun hymns. So they usually appear early on in that sayite recension in the later sequence when everything is systematized. And they bring that solar aspect, the solar cycle into the book of the dead, because it's so important to the Egyptian conception of the afterlife and rebirth. Actually, I don't really like the word rebirth because it presumes being reborn into the same place you were. But that's not what's going on in ancient Egypt.

You became transfigured into a different real. So, Yakaterina, the end of the book of the dead, for instance, The one you got at the Brooklyn Museum of Ankhmerghe. Is it, congratulations, you've got through the Book of the Dead. You've transitioned, you know, you're, you've succeeded in navigating these challenges. You've fended off the animals. Your heart has been weighed successfully. You've made it to the end, well done.

Is there anything like that at the end of the Book of the Dead? Not really. I would say the whole document, the document as a whole, was that. congratulations. We're assuming that you've made it. It's now written in the document and the entire process is documented. And because the Egyptians believe that sort of text recitation but also writing of text has some power, has a sort of magical way of making things come true. the mere existence of a book of the dead is yet another failsafe. If someone forgot to read the ritual, you would have it in writing and it could perpetually repeat that transfiguration of your spirit.

A failsafe, so the book of the dead can also be a failsafe to make sure. Ah, okay, that's clever. So that they have it with them. It's a symbol of status at the same time. Absolutely, absolutely. And gilding. just takes that status to the extreme. Yeah, Katrina, this has been fascinating. My last question is, what happens to the books of the dead? Why do they ultimately fall out of fashion? Do we have any idea?

We have some idea. So books of the dead come from a long tradition of funerary or mortuary beliefs. And they go back to a thousand years to the pyramid texts when the same sort of beliefs were written inside pyramids. They were an oral tradition before then. And by the time books of the dead were beginning to fall out of fashion, they simply morphed into another tradition. So in the late Ptolemaic and Roman period, the so-called books of breathing become more and more popular. And they follow the same beliefs.

and some of them actually integrate some of the Book of the Dead texts, but I suppose it's a question of fashion. It's a question of fashion. There you go. Yeah, Katrina, this has been really interesting, great to finally explore the Book of the Dead and what it actually is, and to focus on an example that people can come and see today at the Brooklyn Museum. Tell us about this exhibition that's going on.

Well, it's very exciting to have the game. Gilded Book of the Dead out on view. Not only is this 7 meter 21 foot long papyrus complete. It has a beginning and an end with blank sheets of papyrus on either side. And all of the texts that should be there are there. I check, I promise. But it has gilding on it, which is incredibly rare. There are about 10 known gilded.

papyri surviving from ancient Egypt, and most of them are really tiny fragments. About three are close to being complete. So it's a really, really special treat to be able to witness a gilded papyrus in person. This one was the first papyrus with gilding on it that I have seen in my entire career over 20 years in Egyptology. so it's really special. Yacetarina, it just goes to me to say, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been such a pleasure.

Thank you. Well, there you go. There was the Brooklyn Museum's curator, Dr. Yacotarina Barbas, talking you through the story of ancient Egypt's Book of the Dead and their brand new exhibition. I hope you enjoyed the episode.

Thank you so much for listening. If you want more episodes on ancient Egypt, well, you are in luck. We have recorded several episodes on ancient Egypt over the years. Two, we're going to put in the show, show notes for you to just click on straight away after this episode if you so wish to. We'll have one which we recorded early last year all about hieroglyphs with Hugo Cook and another one that we recorded live at Chalk Valley History Festival a few years ago now with Professor Toby Wilkinson

about several key artifacts that were discovered in Tutankhamun's tomb alongside the boy Pharaoh. That episode is called Treasures of Tutankhamming. We'll put links to both of those episodes in the show notes. Now, if you've been enjoying the ancients recently, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well,

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