Archaeologists discovered a new papyrus from the Egyptian Book of the Dead

Archaeologists have confirmed that a papyrus scroll discovered last year at the Saqquara necropolis near Cairo does indeed contain texts from the Egyptian Book of the DeadMostafa Waziri, secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said it was the first complete papyrus in a century to have been found. The scroll has been dubbed the “Waziri papyrus”. It is currently being translated into Arabic.

Fans of the 1999 movie The mummy know the Egyptian Book of the Dead plays a key role in bringing back the cursed High Priest Imhotep to terrorize the living. The reality is of course very different: there is not one magical copy of the Book of the Dead, as depicted in the film; there were many versions over the centuries, all unique, with the choice of spells often tailored to the specific needs of deceased royals and (later) high-ranking members of Egyptian society.

These “books” were actually collections of burial texts and spells to help the deceased on their journey through the underworld (Duat) – not to raise people from the dead – and they are not sacred texts like the Bible or the Quran. They were originally painted on objects or written on the walls of burial chambers. Over time, illustrations were added and spells were also engraved on the inside of coffins or the linen shrouds used to wrap the deceased.

One of the most famous spells is the “Weighing of the Heart” (referred to by scholars as 125), dating from about 1475 BCE, when copies of the Book of the Dead were usually written on papyrus. Anubis would lead the deceased before Osiris, where they would swear they had committed none of the 42 “sins” listed, and their hearts would be weighed on a pair of scales against a feather to determine if they were worthy of a place in the afterlife. (Those who watched Moon Knight will remember a version of this ceremony depicted in one of the later episodes, performed by the hippopotamus-headed Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility, Taweret.) Of the 192 spells currently known—no single manuscript contains them all—several protective spells to guard against the damage or loss of the heart, and in one instance (30b) implore the heart not to “betray” its owner during the weighing ritual by “telling lies in the presence of the god”.

Copies of the Book of the Dead were made to order by scribes, and the scrolls could be as short as 1 meter (3.2 feet) and as long as 40 meters (about 131 feet). People knew about the existence of such scrolls in the Middle Ages and assumed them to be religious in nature as they were found in tombs. Karl Richard Lepsius came up with the name Book of the Dead in 1842 after translating such a text. The most famous example to date is the Papyrus of Ani, discovered in Luxor in 1888 and now housed in the British Museum. But such finds are becoming increasingly rare.

Serving the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, the Saqqara Necropolis has numerous pyramids, including the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the design and construction of which is usually credited to Imhotep, chancellor of the Pharoah Djoser (and later immortalized as the monster in The mummy). Saqqara was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979, although looters broke into storage areas during the 2011 Egyptian protests and caused some damage to the site that year. Over the years, archaeologists have unearthed many tombs, artifacts and mummies while excavating the site: a rare gilded funerary mask and several dozen mummies in 2018, for example, or statues of various deities and a number of completely sealed sarcophagi in 2020.

In March 2022, archaeologists discovered five 4,000-year-old tombs, recovering 250 painted wooden sarcophagi with complete mummies and 150 figurines of various gods in the burial place of ancient animals. There was also a collection of cosmetics, bronze vessels and a sistrum (percussion musical instrument). One of the sarcophagi also contained a scroll of papyrus which they believed was about 30 feet long and contained a chapter from the Book of the Dead written in hieroglyphics. It was sent to the laboratory of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo for further examination.

In fact, once fully recovered, the papyrus was 16 meters long. And scholars have now confirmed that the scroll does indeed contain spells from the Book of the Dead. According to Waziri, the papyrus will be presented sometime this year at the opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo.