The Modern Making of the Ancient Egyptian "Book of the Dead"
Rune Nyord, Associate Professor of Ancient Egyptian Art and Archaeology, Emory University

The Egyptian “Book of the Dead” is one of the most famous products of ancient Egyptian culture, rivaling pyramids and mummified bodies in the modern imagination. Equally well known is the standard interpretation of the work as a guide to the afterlife containing literal descriptions and depictions of what the ancient Egyptians believed the hereafter was like. However, the work itself is rather coy about what it is actually about, raising the question of how we came to be so certain of this conventional interpretation.

This talk traces the modern conception of the “Book of the Dead” from its 19thcentury beginnings, arguing that in many ways, key expectations were coming more from the Christian background of early scholars than from the ancient sources which were only gradually and imperfectly becoming known. The second part addresses the resulting question: If the modern understanding of the “Book of the Dead” is so historically contingent, what might a framework look like that is less burdened with modern conceptual baggage and more firmly rooted in ancient social and intellectual contexts?