Edition: First American Edition

Book condition:

Book Description

vi+186 pages with 165 plates (many folding), charts, illustrations. Folio (14 1/4″ x 11 3/4″) issued in original green publisher’s cloth with gilt lettering and illustrated front cover. First edition.

Translated and edited by Charles Davis from the French edition of Paul Pierret Le Livre Des Morts Des Anciens Égyptiens (1882) work and revised with additional knowledge gained since the publication of Pierret’s work. Excellent and valuable preliminary chapters are give on the Mythology and Religion of Primitive Peoples; The Egyptian Pantheon, with illustrations of some of the important deities; The Mythology of Ancient Egyptians; and a historical and critical introduction to the book.

‘The Book of the Dead’ is the common name for the ancient Egyptian funerary text known as ‘The Book of Going Forth By Day. The book of the dead was a description of the ancient Egyptian conception of the afterlife and a collection of hymns, spells, and instructions to allow the deceased to pass through obstacles in the afterlife. The book of the dead was most commonly written on a papyrus scroll and placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased. The name “Book of the Dead” was the invention of the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius, who published a selection of the texts in 1842. When it was first discovered, the book of the dead was thought to be an ancient Egyptian Bible. But unlike the Bible, The Book of the Dead does not set forth religious tenets and was not considered by the ancient Egyptians to be the product of divine revelation, which allowed the content of the book of the dead to change over time. The Book of the Dead was thus the product of a long process of evolution from the Pyramid texts of the Old Kingdom to the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom. About one-third of the chapters in The Book of the Dead are derived from the Coffin Texts. The Book of the Dead itself was adapted to The Book of Breathings in the Late Period, but remained popular in its own right until the Roman period.