Book of the Dead

fragments, half a world

apart, are pieced together
By Laura Geggel - Editor 2 days ago

A piece in New Zealand matched one

in Los Angeles.
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A detail from a Book of the Dead segment, housed at the
Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy. The scenes on this version of
the book are similar to those seen on the fragments in New
Zealand and Los Angeles. (Image credit: Art Images via Getty
Images)

A torn 2,300-year-old mummy wrapping —

covered with hieroglyphics from the ancient
Egyptian Book of the Dead — has been digitally
reunited with its long-lost piece that was ripped
away.
The two linen fragments were pieced together
after a digital image of one segment was
cataloged on an open-source online database by
the Teece Museum of Classical Antiquities at
the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Historians at the Getty Research Institute in Los
Angeles who saw the image quickly realized
that the institute had a shroud fragment that, like
a puzzle piece, fit together with the New
Zealand segment.
"There is a small gap between the two
fragments; however, the scene makes sense, the
incantation makes sense and the text makes it
spot-on," Alison Griffith, an Egyptian art expert
and an associate professor of classics at the
University of Canterbury, said in a statement. "It
is just amazing to piece fragments together
remotely."
Related: In photos: Egypt's oldest mummy
wrappings 
Both fragments are covered with hieratic, or
cursive, script, as well as hieroglyphics that
depict scenes and spells from the Book of the
Dead, an ancient Egyptian manuscript thought
to guide the deceased through the afterlife. 
"Egyptian belief was that the deceased needed
worldly things on their journey to and in the
afterlife, so the art in pyramids and tombs is not
art as such; it's really about scenes of offerings,
supplies, servants and other things you need on
the other side," Griffith said.

The Book of the Dead linen fragment that is housed at the Getty
Research Institute. (Image credit: Digital image courtesy of the
Getty's Open Content Program; CC BY 4.0)
Versions of the Book of the Dead varied from
tomb to tomb, but one of the book's most
famous images is the weighing of the deceased's
heart against a feather, according to the
American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE),
which was not involved with the new finding.
The tradition of including the "Book of the
Dead" in burials began with inscriptions, known
as the Pyramid Texts, written directly on tomb
walls during the late Old Kingdom, and was
initially offered only to royalty buried at
Saqqara. The earliest known Pyramid Text was
found in the tomb of Unas (who lived from
around 2465 B.C. to 2325 B.C.), the last king of
the Fifth Dynasty, according to Encyclopedia
Britannica. 
However, as beliefs and religious practices
changed, Egyptians began including adapted
versions, known as the Coffin Texts, that were
written on the coffins of nonroyal people,
including wealthy elites, according to ARCE.
By the time of the New Kingdom (around 1539
B.C.), the afterlife was thought to be accessible
to all who could afford their own Book of the
Dead, and was written on papyrus and linens
that were wrapped around mummified bodies,
according to ARCE and the University of
Canterbury statement.