In the ancient world, travel to eternal bliss was not easy. For the Greeks, you’d have to hitch a ride with Charon across the River Styx and hope you were one of the few fortunate souls to make it to Elysium. If you were lived among the ancient Aztecs, your journey to Mictlan involved numerous struggles, including climbing a mountain made of obsidian and crossing a desert where there was no gravity and you were blown around by enormous winds.
For the ancient Egyptians, the journey to the afterlife included a danger-filled journey where your wits were tested at every turn – those fortunate enough to make it through would then sit before the god Osirus and 42 other deities while their heart was weighed against a single feather. If things went sideways, your soul would be devoured by a fearsome goddess named Ammit, composed of a lion, hippopotamus and crocodile (the three creatures most likely to eat ancient Egyptians).
No wonder that the Egyptians evolved a collection of about 160 incantations meant to help the dead make it to paradise. Known today as the Book of the Dead – a coinage of the 19th-century German professor named Dr Karl Richard Lepsius, which admittedly is catchier than the literal translation of the Egyptian, “the Book of Going Forth by Day” – a 2,000-year-old copy of the text is now on display at the Brooklyn Museum in a remarkable full, gilded version.
“This particular book of the dead is gilded and complete, both of those are incredibly rare,” said Egyptologist Yekaterina Barbash, who, before working on this exhibition, had never seen a gilded papyrus in all her decades of researching ancient Egypt. One of only about 10 Egyptian gilded papyri known to exist, this one is particularly special, as the blank sheets bookending the start and finish of the scroll indicate that it’s a complete book.
Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians began writing incantations on the walls of tombs in hopes of giving the dead some help in making it through the trek to the paradise. “There’s a long tradition of religious literature, going back to pyramid texts in the third millennium BC,” said Barbash. “There’s also evidence that they were part of an oral tradition before.”
Over time these texts proliferated, eventually being collected into a single scroll. Those wealthy enough to afford one would ask a scribe to create their own copy of the Book of the Dead, which could then be used in the funerary rites for a deceased family member. These compendiums were far-ranging in nature.
“Different chapters of the book address different themes,” said Barbash. “Some of the texts would be used by the living, like protective texts from things like scorpions, crocodiles or bugs. Other texts might be recited during mummification or burial, and there were even transformation spells that help the spirit transform into different things … and travel between worlds.”
The Brooklyn Museum’s copy of the Book of the Dead has a long and complicated history. Dated to sometime between 340BC and 57BC, the scroll was brought to America in the 19th century by a British doctor named Henry Abbott, who staged a huge exhibition of Egyptian artefacts, hoping to find a buyer for the scroll. That proved unsuccessful, although it did manage to attract the attention of the poet Walt Whitman. “Whitman signed the guest book 20 times,” said Barbash. “He was really into the ancient world, and even became friends with Abbott and mentioned the book in a few of his essays.”
The scroll eventually came into possession of the New-York Historical Society (now known as the New York Historical) and in 1948 came into the hands of the Brooklyn Museum. Flash forward to the 2000s, where a three-year effort, led by the superstar conservator Ahmed Tarek and museum conservators Lisa Bruno, Sara Bone, and Josephine Jenks, worked to separate the papyrus from the acidic backing that it had been mounted on, and find a way to stabilize it for generations to come.
“It’s kind of like if you took shredded wheat and had it flattened, it’s just really brittle,” said Bruno. The team used gels to deliver water to the scroll in a controlled manner, and they were able to painstakingly separate the moistened papyrus from the backing. They then mounted it again on special superfine, kozo-fiber Japanese paper, which can be a little as 0.02mm in thickness per sheet.
The fact that many parts of this copy of the Book of the Dead are gilded in gold relates deeply to the text’s purpose and ancient Egyptian beliefs about gold. Specific parts of the papyrus, such as images of crowns, sun disks and shrines, are gilded in order to denote their importance. In addition, ancient Egyptians connected gold to concepts of rebirth and becoming a divinity, so it would make sense to gild parts of a copy of the Book of the Dead.
“Ancient Egyptians believed that gods had gold skin and silver bones and lapis lazuli hair,” said Barbash. “Gold doesn’t tarnish, so for them it was linked to eternity and the divine. There was also an aspect of it just being fancy because you could afford it.”
Because there was little consensus in exactly what texts were to be included in the Book of the Dead, and also due to the unique natures of individual scribes, each copy of the book was different from all others. The dimensions of the scroll itself would vary, as well as the chosen texts, the sequence they were in, and even individual word choice and spelling. “It was considered almost religious insight to add other words and interpretations,” said Barbash. “Scribes would sometimes provide alternative texts in the same version of a book. When you get to the bottom of the page, you can see the scribes are like: ‘Oh my God I’m running out of space!’ trying to fit everything in. It’s a pain to read, but it’s human.”
Returning the Book of the Dead to the public was a mammoth undertaking, and according to Barbash and Bruno it was well worth the effort. “People who have come to the museum so far are in awe, as am I,” said Bruno. “I’m really amazed,” added Barbash, “everything is so fine about it, it’s like lace, a spider’s web. It’s so fragile and intricate and beautiful. It’s just amazing.”
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