Text © Robert
Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2021
Images from
the Internet
The Book of the Dead:
Control and
Entropy in Ancient Egypt
In 1993, while
going for my Master’s in Media Ecology at New York University, I took an independent
course which took place in Egypt, titled “Communication and Culture in Ancient
Egypt,” led by Dr. Terence P. Moran. We visited the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx,
the tombs of Im-Ho-Tep (architect of the Pyramids) and Tutankhamun, the Valley
of the Kings and Queens, Karnak, and many other monuments. This is the paper I
wrote as my final project, about the religion of Osiris, and how the Ancient
Egyptians looked at the technology of textual communication regarding life, and
especially death. I have included the notes written by Dr. Moran.
* * *
Socrates was apprehensive of the written word
and the harm to society that may arise from its use. Quoted by Plato, in Phaedrus,
Socrates stated [Moran: speaking as Amun]:
“The discovery of [the written word] will
create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their
memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember
of themselves… You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of
truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they
will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.”
Plato wrote down this statement during the
third century BCE.
 |
| Scribe |
Nearly four millennia before Socrates
expressed his conviction, writing had already been in wide use in Egypt in the
form of hieroglyphics, or word-pictures (from the Greek hieros,
“sacred,” and gluptein, “to carve in stone) [Quirke and Spencer, p.
121]. An entire caste of society was trained as scribes. Through years of
training, a scribe would know as many as seven hundred hieroglyphs. Nearly
every statue, temple, tomb and wall were inscribed with stories of the artists,
or the pharaoh, or with religious legends of mythology. Meticulously carved
into stone, or painted on wood or sheets of papyrus, the scribes’ work survived
over the centuries to describe like during this flourishing period of Egyptian
History. [Moran’s comment: It is worth noting that all the Pharaoh’s family
were also taught how to read and write. Then, as now, communication meant
control.].
Many of the surviving texts of this
civilization describe invoices of textiles, livestock and other goods. There
also remain texts of poetry, daily religious prayers and magical incantations,
ceremonies and beliefs, histories of gods, the origin of the universe, and a large
quantity of information on the afterlife of the dead. The latter has been
collected into what is commonly known as The Book of the Dead, or Pert
em hru, literally translated as Chapters of the Coming Forth by Day [Hope,
p. 17] [Moran: Note the differences between these two titles; the original
one tells so much about how the Egyptians viewed life and death].
 |
| Thoth and Ammit |
The Book of the Dead, which dates from the early New Kingdom (c.
1567-1320 BCE) [Armour, p. 10], is a primer for the recently deceased, a guide
to understanding how to protect oneself from the dangers of the afterlife, how
to get servants to do the required labor for the basic necessities (food,
shelter, clothing), and especially how to behave and converse with the gods
when one meets them (including Thoth, Anubis, Horus, and especially Osiris, the
Lord of the Dead) as, for instance having to avoid the devouring of one’s heart
by the demon goddess Ammit (whose body was part lion and hippopotamus, with the
head of a crocodile).
The origin of The Book of the Dead, a
compilation of numerous texts collected from fragments of papyri, is unknown
and may be older than the Egyptian culture itself. The beliefs were possibly
brought by immigrants or invaders. For the Egyptians, The Book of the Dead
dealt with the realm of the mystic, and was controlled by the clergy.
 |
| Saqqara |
The earliest known recorded versions of these
passages and stories are usually referred to as the Pyramid Texts, beginning approximately
2345 BCE. The texts were taken from hieroglyphic inscriptions on the walls of
various pyramids and tombs as ancient as the V and VI Dynasties in Saqqara
(Memphis).
The Pyramid Texts, also known as the
Heliopolitan Recension, were made up of 714 “utterances,” which had a number of
functions, including “a funeral ritual and a ritual of mortuary offerings at
the tomb, magical charms, very ancient rituals of worship, ancient religious
hymns, fragments of old myths, and prayers and petitions on behalf of the dead
king” [Breasted, 71]. The oldest texts are based on the dominant belief in the
sun-god Ra (or Re). There is no mention of death in the early Pyramid Texts except
in reference to the unworthy or a foe. The pharaoh did not die, bur rather went
to join Ra and other gods in the celestial hereafter, becoming an equal with
the gods.
 |
| Pyramid Texts |
In the religious tradition of the solar faith
[Breasted, pp. 65-93], there was no heaven or hell, but a heaven-like celestial
place which the dead follower shared wit the gods, as one of their members.
Osiris, on the other hand, “represented the realm and the dominion of death, to
which the follower of Re was not delivered up” [Breasted, p. 93]. Osiris’
acceptance rose later in Egyptian mythology.
The tradition of Osiris as the king of the
netherworld, which grew more popular with the collective community, originated
in the Delta region of Northern Egypt (e.g., Alexandria) and “migrated up the
Nile” [Breasted, p. 107]. This belief came in direct conflict with the State’s
official religion of a celestial afterlife for the pharaoh and Ra. In much of
the early Pyramid Texts, there was an open hostility towards the Osiris
netherworld by the celestial hereafter, including some exorcisms to keep Osiris
and his family (e.g., Isis, Horus, Set, Nephthys) from entering the solar tomb
of the pyramid. Diametrically opposed, Ra ruled the afterlife of the sky and
Osiris ruled the underground netherworld. In time, the popularity of the
netherworld would overcome that of the celestial sun-god. Part of this
acceptance was the belief in a resurrection by Osiris from death. As with
Christianity, the possibility of a life-after-death meant a hard life might
have its rewards (as well as punishments) in the next “world,” even if it meant
as a servant to the pharaoh and his god companions.
 |
| Osiris and Maat |
Also rising out of the Osiris myth was the
Maat (the concept of truth and ethics, as she is the goddess of truth who
judged the deceased and was the daughter of Ra; sometimes known as Ma’at) [Armour,
pp. 161-162]. This trial increased the possibility of resurrection and
regeneration if the heart of the deceased is lighter than the feather (or total
obliteration in the jaws of Ammit, the “devouress,” if the heart outweighs the
feather).
Through the found fragments in the pyramids at
Saqqara and Heliopolis, it has become evident that as “the Pyramid Texts were
eventually Osirianisied” [Breasted, p. 109], which included some editing of the
Pyramid Texts by priests following each successive pharaoh, found throughout
the chiseled hieroglyphics in a series of five pyramids.
The mortuary passages of this period were
excavated exclusively in the royal tombs and were meant only for the kings and
gods, and especially Ra. The Pyramid Texts were mostly absent in the tombs of
the nobles [Breasted, p. 72].
The information encased within the Pyramid
Texts were held closely by the priests of the Solar religion. What information
they “published” was chiseled into tombs that were sealed, never to be opened
or seen, thereby creating a cybernetic system to control the contents of
knowledge that was the privilege of the priests, pharaohs, and gods. The
priests and scribes were not permitted to use the information for their own
“souls” to guide them to the celestial grounds.
 |
| Ra |
The purpose of any cybernetic system is to
effect control, and any system is vulnerable to entropy, including information.
Over time – in this example, hundred of years – as the religion itself changed
from a Ra-based center to the overwhelmingly popular Osiris-based center, as
explained above, belief in Osiris became egalitarian: everyone dies. It is the favourability
of the possibility of resurrection through Osiris that became the religious
equalizing factor, among the peasant classes, though the nobles were the first
to employ the mortuary texts [Moran: Note how writing was used to control
death (entropy), first by the pharaohs, the by the nobles, later by everyone].
Through the centuries, as the priests slowly
lost their thrall-like grip on the funerary texts, it became common to find sections
of what has been collectively known as the Pyramid Texts painted on the many
layers of the sarcophagi of nobles, who could afford to hire the priests to
prepare the texts, and the highly trained scribes to do the writing and art
work needed to prepare the to meet Thoth, on the path to join Osiris. At this
stage the funerary texts are known as the Coffin Texts because of the location
of their inscriptions. The time frame for this function is the Middle Kingdom,
or XI to XIII Dynasties [Hope, 186].
 |
| Coffin Text |
This period, approximately 2080 to 1650 BCE,
saw the reunion of the Two Lands (North and South), private burials in mastabas
and rock tombs, and the appearance of human-shaped sarcophagi. It was on these
multi-layered anthropoid inner (wooden) and outer (stone) casings that the
Coffin Texts began to appear.
There were still differences between the
pharaoh’s burials and those of lower classes in the elaborateness of the
ceremonies and the size of the burial place, and in the hearing of the priests
to recite prayers and magic spells. However, the texts and rituals – and the
resurrection – were shared by all. These texts were similar to the later
Pyramid Texts, serving the same functions, but having been appropriated and
adopted by the middle and official classes, they included the addition of
“unofficial” popular mortuary literature. In theory, even the lowest class of peasants
could be allowed to purchase the possibility of deification, but they could not
afford the fee [Wilson, p. 117].
The influence of the previous Ra-based
celestial religion was a strong foundation on which the beliefs were raised, so
there was a coalescing of the celestial and netherworld afterlives. James Breasted
states that “in the Pyramid Texts Osiris was lifted skyward, while in the
Coffin Texts and The Book of the Dead, Re was dragged earthward”
[Breasted, p. 237].
Much of the funerary literature of the time
consisted of charms to protect the deceased from various dangers, such as
having one’s head removed or the body decaying in the netherworld. As the
priests found the selling of these charms quite lucrative, they became more
creative about the possible dangers in the hereafter, continually writing new
charms and spells that became part of the increasing Coffin Texts.
Due to the desegregation of the funerary texts
to numerous classes of people, a need arose for a more substantial number of
coffins to have the information inscribed upon them. No longer needing to be
carefully chiseled on the stone walls of pyramids, stelas and tombs, as they
had been for royal personages, the Coffin Texts, carved and written with pen-and-ink
onto wood, were often copied from previous texts with “carelessness and
inaccuracy, the effort being to fill up the planks with writing as fast as
possible” [Breasted, p. 236]. Often the same chapters were rewritten a number
of times for this purpose.
Whereas redundancy tends to defeat entropy, in
this case the repetition did not overcome this process due to the lack of consistency
in the information. This produced a text that proved more erratic and less
understood, rather than clarified by repetition. The information, rather than
evolving into precision, becomes superfluous due to the dissimilarities in
story and detail. At the early stages of the texts, much of the content was
dogmatic rhetoric not wholly understood by most who used it; as it was copied
more and more inaccurately, it was increasingly misunderstood and communicated
by rote. It is this lack of concordant detail that proves the entropic
character of the textual information.
The final stage of the funerary text, the aforementioned
The Book of the Dead, was made possible by the rise of the use of
papyrus paper which was relatively inexpensive and, more importantly, portable.
As the centuries passed, it was becoming more impractical for nobles to have
large tombs built, especially for those of the lower classes and of lesser wealth.
As the population grew, space became more precious and less affordable, both
economically and geographically.
 |
Book of the Dead: Anubis weighs heart and feather,
while Thoth and Ammit watch and wait to left,
with negative confession judges above |
One of the inclusions to the funerary texts of
this period is a higher sense of moral vision to achieve divine recognition and
a joyous afterlife. Besides Thoth, Anubis and other principal gods of judgment,
there were now forty-two additional judges who had names such as “Bone Breaker
that Came out of Hierakonpolis” and “Blood Eater that Came out of the Place of
Execution” [Breasted, p. 257]. For these gods arose what became known as the
negative confession, in which the deceased must state one confession to each of
the forty-two judges (e.g., “I did not rob,” “I did not make falsehoods in the
place of truth”) [Breasted, p 257]. The newly departed must know the names of
each of the gods verbatim, and chapters of The Book of the Dead were
produced by the priests to guide the deceased’s progress through these trials.
The term “Book of the Dead” is actually a
misnomer, as the “guide” is not actually a “book” but a collection of random
chapters to prepare the deceased for the next world, as well as religious invocations
and ceremonial prayers. Written on
papyrus scrolls ranging from 20 to 90 feet in length, 14 to 18 inches in width,
and containing from 75 to well over 100 chapters [Budge, p. xxx], the scrolls
were usually placed between the legs of the deceased before mummification.
The popularity of the papyrus invocations was
so widespread that priests and scribes pre-prepared scrolls and later filled in
the names of the deceased, such as with the most complete copy of The Book
of the Dead presently known, called The Papyri of Ani, which is
housed in the British Museum. Dating from the XVIII Dynasty (1500-1400 BCE), it
was found at Thebes in the 19th Century CE.
As with the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, there is
no fixed order for the vignettes; it was up to the scribes or priests to choose
which selections would be included and in which order. The amount of money paid
determined how many chapters would comprise a particular roll (The Papyri
of Ani contained 186 chapters and was 78 feet long [Budge, pp. cxliii-clii]).
Due again to economics, one of the major
changes in the evolution of the Pyramid texts to The Book of the Dead was
the addition of the ceremonial chapters.
Previously, priests and mourners would be hired to sing prayers and
hymns for the deceased. Through the entropic necessity of catering to a mass
population, the texts became more common, less specified, and less complex.
Much of the ceremonial texts were eventually removed. What remained of the
highly ritualistic mortuary texts were the prayers and chants to be said by the
deceased themselves in the netherworld [Budge, p. xxx].
As well as the religious significance of The
Book of the Dead, the technological aspects leading up to the mass use
affected is “time binding.” [McLuhan, p. 37] [Moran: McLuhan is here using a
concept he learned from Harold Innis’ The Bias of Communication], inherently
cybernetic due to its resistance to modification, as well as low accessibility
to the general population, resulting from its lack of mobility. A high degree
of skill, artistic endeavor, and training (“technic”) were necessary to become
a scribe who worked with a stone medium. This was especially true concerning
the funeral carvings, which were located inside sealed tombs. Even in many
temples, the inner chambers were sealed to all but a hierarchy of priests, with
only a solitary high priest(ess) allowed into the core cell.
Although McLuhan refers to the hieroglyphic
form of writing as a cool medium, the use of papyri caused its “hotting up,”
thereby “unifying spaces horizontally, both in political and entertainment
empires” [McLuhan, p. 37]. This is also true for religious – as well as
funerary – texts. As the information pluralized, the knowledge of the texts
centralized a larger portion of the civilization. The accessibility of the
papyri medium resulted in a speeding up of communication technique, enabling
the religious authority a means to extend further throughout the kingdom
[McLuhan, p. 96].
In this case, a hotter medium, or technology,
can dominate over an older, cooler one. Through the rise of the use of papyri,
the spread of the information of the possibility of a life-after-death as
presented in The Book of the Dead was no exception. Despite this outgrowth,
the Egyptian culture managed to survive for many centuries beyond the
introduction of the revolutionary process of recording and transporting
information on a portable medium. Partially, this was due to the need for the
development of transportable culture [Ellul, p. 116]. As the Egyptian
civilization crept upriver on the Nile, further from the Delta and toward Aswan
and beyond, the stories of the gods and an Osirian netherworld came with it.
Despite the flexibility of content imparted by
the copied text, which exposes the communication method to an entropic loss of information,
part of the reason why the culture remained strong for so many millennia, was
the older, cooler medium of “writing” hieroglyphics on stone. Since some
information was chiseled in rock, some consistency was preserved in the
stories that remained throughout most of the texts. This was solidified more
after the rise of the Osiris myth since it was not until after Ra was superseded
that the texts were preserved in more public places (e.g., obelisks, or
stelas), rather than in the sealed tombs.
Through the long history of Egypt’s
fascination with the soul (ba) after death, the leading cause of change
in the stages of culture pertaining to the mortuary texts was not the
advancement of hieroglyphic writing, but the technological advancement of the
medium upon which it was stored. Starting on static stone, moving to painted
and cared wood, and then to transportable papyrus, the dissemination of information,
which started from the aloof royalty alone, was able to reach the mass
population. Paradoxically, despite the many changes, growth, and “hotting up”
of this culture, it was able to maintain some level of consistency, somewhat
holding at bay the ever-raging tides of entropy, by having at its core a heart
of stone.
Bibliography
Armour, Robert A. (1986). Gods and Myths of
Ancient Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.
Breasted, James Henry (1933). The Dawn of Consciousness.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Budge, E.A. Wallis (1967). The Book of the
Dead… The Papyrus of Ani in the British Museum: The Egyptian Text with
Interlinear Transliteration and Translation, a Running Translation,
Introduction, Etc. New York: Dover Publications (Reproduction of 1895
edition).
Campbell, Jeremy (1982). Grammatical Man: Information,
Entropy, Language, and Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
DeFleur, Melvin L. and Sandra Ball-Rokeach
(1966). Theories of Mass Communication. New York: David McKay Company,
Inc.
Ellul, Jacques (1964). The Technological
Society. New York: Vintage Books.
Hope, Murray (1984). Practical Egyptian
Magic. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Ions, Veronica (1982). Library of the World’s
Myths and Legends: Egyptian Mythology. New York: Peter Bedrick Books.
McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding
Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: Penguin Books.
Quirke, Stephen and Jeffrey Spencer, Eds.
(1992). The British Museum Book of Ancient Egypt. New York: Thames and
Hudson.
Wilson, John A. (1951). The Burden of
Egypt: An Interpretation of Ancient Egyptian Culture. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
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