Egyptian Book of the Dead

The Egyptian Book of the Dead is not a single unified text but a collection of magical and religious spells — formally titled by the Egyptians themselves the 'Book of Coming Forth by Day' — placed in tombs with the deceased to help them navigate the afterlife and achieve eternal life. Developed from the earlier Pyramid Texts (c. 2400 BCE) and Coffin Texts (c. 2100-1700 BCE), the Book of the Dead emerged during the New Kingdom period (c. 1550 BCE) and was used in various forms for over a thousand years. Individual papyrus scrolls were customized for each deceased person, containing selected spells from a larger corpus of approximately 200 chapters.

The text is structured around the journey of the soul after death. The deceased must travel through the Duat (underworld), encountering various gates, guardians, and challenges that require specific knowledge, spells, and declarations to pass. The climax of this journey is the weighing of the heart ceremony in Chapter 125: the deceased's heart is placed on one side of a scale, and the feather of Ma'at (truth, justice, cosmic order) on the other. Anubis, the jackal-headed god, oversees the weighing; Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe, records the result. If the heart is light as a feather, the deceased has lived righteously and passes into eternal life in the Field of Reeds. If the heart is heavier, the monster Ammit — part lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile — devours it, and the soul ceases to exist.

Before the weighing, the deceased recites the 'Negative Confession' of Chapter 125, a declaration of innocence before 42 divine judges. This remarkable ethical declaration — cataloguing specific sins the deceased claims not to have committed — represents one of the earliest systematic moral catalogues in world history. Its parallels to the Ten Commandments and to the Psalms of moral declaration have made it one of the most studied comparative texts in biblical scholarship.

The Book of the Dead's wide chronological and social reach — spanning more than 1,500 years and eventually available to any Egyptian who could afford a papyrus scroll — makes it the most widely distributed religious text of the ancient world before the biblical literature. Understanding it is essential for understanding the religious culture that surrounded Israel in Egypt and throughout the biblical period.

• Psalm 15 (who may dwell on God's mountain)
• Revelation 20:12 (books of deeds opened at judgment)
• Matthew 25:31-46 (judgment by deeds)
• Proverbs 22:17-24:22 (influenced by Amenemope)
• Exodus 20 (Decalogue parallel to Negative Confession)
• Exodus 7-12 (plagues engaging Egyptian religion)

E.A. Wallis Budge of the British Museum purchased the famous Papyrus of Ani in Egypt in 1888 for around 150 Egyptian pounds. It was smuggled out of Egypt in pieces hidden in the bottom of a suitcase. At 78 feet long, it is the longest and best illustrated Book of the Dead papyrus in existence.