![]() "Too often has the 'Book of the Dead' been called a 'guide' to the afterlife it was so much more than that," Scalf told Live Science. The "Book of the Dead" is most famous for its guidance to the deceased, but it likely also served other purposes. (Image credit: Rogers Fund, 1924/The Met/ CC0 1.0) Behind her sits the sun god and then the phoenix. In front of the god is the emblem for the east, and to the left of this is a boat being punted by a woman (the deceased) with a long oar. This time, Osiris is depicted on the right side, again with a djed-pillar behind him. The lower part of the papyrus features spell 100. In the left one is the phoenix, while five deities stand in the right one. In front of the god is an offering table with food topped by a large lotus flower. At the left of the vignette is the god Osiris holding a was-scepter behind him stands a large djed-pillar. On the top are the text and vignette for spell 129. This small papyrus features "Book of the Dead" spells 100 and 129. It didn't have "spells that were used particularly by women" or spells that were used primarily by men, Marissa Stevens, an Egyptologist and assistant director of the Pourdavoud Center for the Study of the Iranian World at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Live Science in an email. "Many owners of Books of the Dead would have been unable to read the hieroglyphic texts, but they could understand the complex vignettes that summarized the contents of the spells" Pinch wrote. "Pictures of great importance in the New Kingdom collection of funerary texts now called the Egyptian Book of the Dead," wrote Geraldine Pinch, an Egyptologist, in her book " Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2004). The chapters of the "Book of the Dead" described some of the things one might encounter - such as the weighing of the heart ceremony in which a person's deeds were weighed against the feather of the goddess Maat, a deity associated with justice. The ancient Egyptians believed that the body of the deceased could be renewed in the afterlife leaving a person to navigate a place of "gods, demons, mysterious locations and potential obstacles," wrote Kemp. One of these essential spells is now known as Spell 17, which discusses the importance of the sun-god Re (also called Ra), one of the most important Egyptian gods, Dorman noted. ![]() Some spells appear more frequently in copies of the "Book of the Dead" than others, and some were considered almost essential. A section of the "Book of the Dead." Here we see judgment of the dead, with the weighing of the heart ritual. ![]()
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