The Book of the Dead of Nehem-es-Rataui is, along with the Papyrus Brocklehurst, the most important

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

in the collection of the

Museum August Kestner The August Kestner Museum (), previously ''Kestner-Museum'', is a museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums hav ...

Hanover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

, Germany. It contains one of the many traditional versions of the Egyptian

Book of the Dead The ''Book of the Dead'' is the name given to an Ancient Egyptian funerary texts, ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC ...

, which differs most significantly from similar papyri in the style of the central scene of the Judgement of the dead. The papyrus was part of the collection of

August Kestner Georg Christian August Kestner (28 November 1777, in Hanover – 5 March 1853, in Rome) was a German diplomat and art collector. Life Kestner was the son of civil servant Johann Christian Kestner and his wife Charlotte Buff. From 1796 to 17 ...

and is now located in the Museum August Kestner in Hanover (inventory number 3454), where it is displayed in Room II of the Egyptological collection with other gravegoods and artefacts from the death cult. The book derives from

Thebes Thebes or Thebae may refer to one of the following places: *Thebes, Egypt, capital of Egypt under the 11th, early 12th, 17th and early 18th Dynasties *Thebes, Greece, a city in Boeotia *Phthiotic Thebes Phthiotic Thebes ( or Φθιώτιδες Θ ...

and is dated to the

Ptolemaic period The Ptolemaic Kingdom (; , ) or Ptolemaic Empire was an ancient Greek polity based in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 305 BC by the Macedonian Greek general Ptolemy I Soter, a companion of Alexander the Great, and ruled ...

, probably around 200 BC. The papyrus was among the grave goods of the Singer of

Amun Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, r ...

, Nehem-es-Rataui. The Papyrus was written in

Hieratic Hieratic (; ) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE ...

script, completely in black ink. Originally the 21 centimetre high document had a length of 715 centimetres - that is, 15 pages. As a result of damage in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, when the central city of Hanover was bombed and the Kestner Museum took heavy damage, it only survives in the form of three fragments with a length of 1.64 m, which includes the central scene. The very tight combination of the important Egyptian deities in the central scene is notable.

Osiris Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wikt:wsjr, wsjr'') was the ancient Egyptian deities, god of fertility, agriculture, the Ancient Egyptian religion#Afterlife, afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was ...

sits in judgement,

Anubis Anubis (; ), also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian (), is the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine hea ...

and

Horus Horus (), also known as Heru, Har, Her, or Hor () in Egyptian language, Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as the god of kingship, healing, protection, the sun, and t ...

weigh the heart of the deceased,

Thoth Thoth (from , borrowed from , , the reflex of " eis like the ibis") is an ancient Egyptian deity. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an African sacred ibis, ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine count ...

records the result and the monstrous

Ammit Ammit (; , "Devourer of the Dead"; also rendered Ammut or Ahemait) was an ancient Egyptian goddess with the forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, and the head of a crocodile—the three largest "man-eating" animals known ...

waits to devour the ba of the deceased in the event of a negative judgement. On a lotus bloom between Osiris and Thoth stand the four

sons of Horus The four sons of Horus were a group of four deities in ancient Egyptian religion who were believed to protect deceased people in the afterlife. Beginning in the First Intermediate Period of Egyptian history ( 2181–2055 BC), Imsety, Hapy, Duamut ...

. The deceased is at the right, accompanied by two goddesses. At other points, the text is broken up by small images, mostly of the Horus falcon. Another large image is located to the left of the main image, divided into four smaller images.

Bibliography

* Günter Burkard, Hans-Werner Fischer-Elfert: ''Ägyptische Handschriften.'' Vol. 4 (= ''Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland'' Vol. 19, 4). Steiner, Stuttgart 1994, p. 214, n. 316. * Hans-Georg Dettmer: ''„… den Sinn für das Schöne erwecken …“. Führer durch das Kestner-Museum Hannover.'' Kestner-Museum Hannover, Hannover 1998, , pp. 63–65. * Christian E. Loeben: ''Die Ägypten-Sammlung des Museum August Kestner und ihre (Kriegs-)Verluste.'' Leidorf, Rahden 2011, , p. 181.

External links

Entry
in ''Das altägyptische Totenbuch. Ein digitales Textzeugenarchv''. (German) Museum August Kestner Egyptian papyri containing images Book of the Dead {{papyrus-stub