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Liber II · Ancient Magic

Liber II · Ancient Magic · Chapter III: Egyptian Magic

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: Spells for Going Forth by Day

The Egyptian Book of the Dead explained: New Kingdom papyri of afterlife spells, the weighing of the heart, the Papyrus of Ani and its later occult legacy.

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The Egyptian Book of the Dead is the modern name for a body of roughly two hundred funerary spells that Egyptians called the "Spells for Going Forth by Day". Emerging around the start of the New Kingdom (about 1550 BCE) and copied on papyrus scrolls placed with the dead, it supplied protective words, illustrated vignettes and the famous judgement before Osiris to help the deceased survive and flourish in the afterlife.

From Pyramid and Coffin to Papyrus§

Egyptian funerary ritual already had a long written history when the Book of the Dead appeared. In the Old Kingdom, kings had spells carved inside their pyramids, as described in The Pyramid Texts; in the Middle Kingdom, officials painted related and new spells inside their coffins. During the late Middle Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period, new compositions began to appear on coffins and burial shrouds, among them early versions of spells later counted in the Book of the Dead.

By the early Eighteenth Dynasty the collection had taken on its classic form: a roll of papyrus, written in cursive hieroglyphs or hieratic, with vignettes in black and colour, placed in the coffin, between the mummy's legs or in a hollow statue of the funerary god. Papyrus made the spells portable and cheaper than carved stone, though a good copy was still a costly object, and owners came overwhelmingly from the priestly, scribal and official classes. Some rolls were made for a named client; others were prepared in advance with blank spaces in which the buyer's name was later added.

The modern title comes from the German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius, who in 1842 published a long Ptolemaic papyrus in Turin as Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter and numbered its spells from 1 to 165. Later scholars added further spells from other manuscripts, so the standard numbering now runs to around 190, with additional "supplementary" items. No single papyrus contains them all.

Spells, Vignettes and the Order of the Roll§

A Book of the Dead papyrus was organised less like a book than like an anthology. In the New Kingdom the choice and order of spells varied widely. From the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (seventh to sixth centuries BCE) a more standard sequence, the so-called Saite recension, became usual and lasted into the Ptolemaic period.

The spells cover many needs:

  • Protection and preservation: spells to prevent the decay of the body, to keep the head from being cut off, and to repel crocodiles, snakes and other dangers of the underworld.
  • Transformation: spells for taking the form of a falcon, a swallow, a lotus, a heron or a god, so that the deceased could move freely between worlds.
  • Knowledge: spells giving the names of gates, gatekeepers and regions of the underworld, on the principle that knowing a being's name granted safe passage.
  • Provision: spells for receiving offerings, breathing air and drinking water, and the "shabti spell" (Spell 6), which ordered small servant figurines to perform labour on the deceased's behalf.
  • Theology: long compositions such as Spell 17, a dense statement about the creator god with glosses explaining its meaning, and hymns to Ra and Osiris.

The vignettes are as important as the text. They show the deceased adoring gods, working in the fertile Field of Reeds (Spell 110), sailing in the sun boat or standing before the tribunal of Osiris. Text and image together were meant to act; an illustration could function as part of the spell.

The Weighing of the Heart and the Negative Confession§

The best-known part of the collection is Spell 125, which describes the dead person's arrival in the Hall of the Two Truths. There the deceased addresses Osiris and then forty-two divine judges, naming each one and declaring innocence of a specific wrong: theft, killing, lying, cheating with weights and measures, stealing offerings from temples, polluting water and so on. Modern scholars call this list the "negative confession".

Many papyri illustrate the scene with a balance. The deceased's heart, regarded as the seat of thought and memory, is weighed against a feather representing Ma'at, the principle of truth, justice and cosmic order. Anubis tends the scales, Thoth records the result, and a composite monster, Ammit, the "Devourer", waits to consume the heart of anyone found wanting. A successful result leads to presentation before Osiris enthroned.

Spell 125 is often read as an ethical document, and it does show the moral ideals of Egyptian society. It is also a ritual text: declaring innocence in the correct words, before named judges, was itself a means of passing the trial. Spell 30B, frequently inscribed on heart scarabs placed over the mummy, asks the heart not to stand as a witness against its owner. The coexistence of moral ideals and protective formulae shows how naturally Egyptian religion combined what modern readers might separate into "religion" and "magic". The amulets used alongside these texts are discussed in Amulets and Talismans.

Famous Manuscripts§

Thousands of Book of the Dead papyri and fragments survive, scattered across museums worldwide. A few are especially well known:

  • The Papyrus of Ani, a richly illustrated Nineteenth-Dynasty roll (around 1250 BCE) made for a royal scribe, acquired by the British Museum in 1888 and published by E. A. Wallis Budge. Its weighing scene is the image most people associate with the Book of the Dead.
  • The Papyrus of Hunefer, also in the British Museum, with a celebrated vignette of the judgement and the Opening of the Mouth ceremony.
  • The Papyrus of Nu and other long Eighteenth-Dynasty rolls, valued by scholars for their extensive selections of spells.
  • The Turin papyrus published by Lepsius, a Ptolemaic example of the standardised later sequence.

In the Greco-Roman period the Book of the Dead gradually gave way to shorter texts, such as the Books of Breathing, but the underlying aims—protection, transformation and vindication—remained the same. For the broader religious world behind these texts see Ancient Egyptian Religion.

Is the Book of the Dead a Book of Magic?§

Egyptologists debate the label. The spells are certainly "magical" in the sense that they claim to act through words, names and images: the deceased identifies with gods, threatens hostile beings and commands figurines. The Egyptian concept of heka, divine creative power used in ritual, covers exactly this. But heka was a respectable, priestly power, used in temples as well as tombs, so the modern contrast between religion and magic fits poorly.

The collection was also not secret in the sense later occultists imagined. It was a commercial product, produced in quantity for those who could afford it, and its contents overlap with temple liturgy. Its "secrets" were the knowledge of names and paths needed in the next world, not hidden doctrines about the human soul in this one. Scholars therefore usually describe it as funerary literature that uses ritual power, rather than as a grimoire.

The Book of the Dead in Western Esotericism§

Classical and Renaissance writers knew nothing of the Book of the Dead itself. Their Egypt was the Egypt of Greek authors, of the Hermetic writings and of hieroglyphs misread as symbolic riddles. Only after Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822 and the publication of papyri by Lepsius and others could the texts be read.

Popular access came in the late nineteenth century. Budge's translations, issued from 1895 onward in many editions, were cheap, widely circulated and confident in tone, and they became standard reading in occult circles. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn drew on Egyptian god-forms, names and imagery in its rituals, as described in The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and later esoteric authors quoted Budge's renderings as if they disclosed initiatory mysteries. Some writers even presented the Book of the Dead as an Egyptian counterpart of the Tibetan Bardo Thödol, an English edition of which was published in 1927 under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead in deliberate echo of the Egyptian work.

Modern Egyptology has corrected much of this picture. Budge's translations are now considered outdated, and scholars stress the funerary and practical character of the spells. Yet the papyri remain among the most vivid documents of ancient religion, and their images of judgement, transformation and the journey of the soul continue to shape how the afterlife is imagined across many traditions, a theme taken up in Reincarnation and the Afterlife.

Frequently asked questions§

What did the Egyptians call the Book of the Dead?§

They called it rw nw prt m hrw, usually translated "Spells for Going Forth by Day". The title refers to the hope that the deceased would be free to leave the tomb in daylight and move between this world and the next.

Was the Book of the Dead the Egyptian Bible?§

No. It was not a canonical scripture, there was no single fixed text, and it was not read in public worship. Each copy was a personal selection of funerary spells made for a particular burial.

What happens in the weighing of the heart?§

In the scene associated with Spell 125, the heart of the deceased is weighed on a balance against the feather of Ma'at while Anubis supervises and Thoth records the verdict. If the deceased has spoken the declarations of innocence correctly and is judged true, he or she is presented to Osiris; the monster Ammit waits to devour a heart that fails.

Who could own a Book of the Dead?§

In principle anyone who could pay for it, but in practice owners came mainly from the elite: priests, scribes, officials and their families. Women as well as men owned copies, and cheaper rolls with fewer spells and simpler illustrations were also produced.

Sources and further reading§