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Egyptianbeliefs In Britannica's The Book Of The Dead

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In Britannica’s article is stated that the Book of Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerarytext. The book contains magic spells intended to guide a dead person's voyage through theunderworld or the Duat, and into the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was part of a practice offunerary texts which contained the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Instead of papyrus, theywere painted onto objects. Some of the spells included were drawn from these older works anddate to the 3rd millennium BC. A lot of spells which made up the Book continued to beengraved sarcophagis and tomb walls. The Book of the Dead was positioned in the coffin orburial chamber of the dead.There was no single or legitimate Book of the Dead. The remaining papyri containvarious collections …show more content…

The Book of the Dead is an important source of information about Egyptianbeliefs in this area.In the Book of Dead, hymn compilations to Re, the sun god, were also included. Manydifferent authors, sources and compilers helped and contributed. Scribes wrote the texts onpapyrus, often very colorful, and then sold them to people to use for burial. The Pyramid Texts’purpose was to help the deceased King take his place with the gods, specifically to reunify himwith his celestial father, Ra. This period was when the afterlife was seen as somewhere beingup in the sky, rather than the underworld written in the Book of the Dead. Near the end of theOld Kingdom, the Pyramid Texts stopped being exclusive only to the royals. They wereimplemented by regional councils and other high-ranking officials. There were a multiple copiesof the book that were found in Egyptian tombs. Unfortunately, none contains all of the 200chapters.The overall context of the article was very informative. It showed a lot about theEgyptian culture and their beliefs. The article was also very straight to the point, explaining allthe intricate stories that tied together to create the Book of

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