WEBVTT 00:00:06.101 --> 00:00:08.200 We're in the Brithish Museum in London, 00:00:08.200 --> 00:00:11.360 in a room that is filled with ancient Egiptian mummies, 00:00:11.360 --> 00:00:15.565 and as a result it's also filled with modern children. 00:00:15.565 --> 00:00:18.779 And tourist. It's a great room, there's great stuff here. 00:00:18.779 --> 00:00:21.672 We're looking at a fragment of a scroll 00:00:21.672 --> 00:00:22.876 which is largely ignored. 00:00:22.968 --> 00:00:24.101 It's a papyrus scroll. 00:00:24.178 --> 00:00:27.390 A papyrus is a reed that grows in the Nile Delta 00:00:27.606 --> 00:00:29.806 that was made into a kind of paper-like substance 00:00:29.806 --> 00:00:34.003 and actually was probably the sigle most important surface for writing 00:00:34.003 --> 00:00:35.578 right up into the Medieval. 00:00:35.715 --> 00:00:40.305 We're looking at a written text of something that we call the Book of the Dead 00:00:40.305 --> 00:00:43.021 which the ancient Egyptians had other names for, 00:00:43.021 --> 00:00:44.864 but which was a ancient text 00:00:44.864 --> 00:00:48.063 that had spell and prayers and incantations, 00:00:48.063 --> 00:00:50.275 things that the dead needed in the afterlife. 00:00:50.275 --> 00:00:53.411 This is a tradition that goes all the way back to the Old Kingdom, 00:00:53.411 --> 00:00:56.444 writing that we call pyramid text. 00:00:56.444 --> 00:00:59.065 These were sense of instructions for the afterlife, 00:00:59.065 --> 00:01:03.195 and than later we have coffin text, writing on coffins 00:01:03.195 --> 00:01:05.566 and then even later in the New Kingdom, 00:01:05.566 --> 00:01:08.675 we have scrolls like this that we call the books of the dead. 00:01:08.675 --> 00:01:10.803 Sometimes the texts were written on papyrus, 00:01:10.803 --> 00:01:11.943 like the one we are looking at, 00:01:11.943 --> 00:01:13.996 sometimes they were written on shrouds 00:01:13.996 --> 00:01:15.410 that the dead were burried in. 00:01:15.410 --> 00:01:22.102 So these were really important texts that were originally just for kings in the Old Kingdom, 00:01:22.102 --> 00:01:26.697 but came to be used by people who were not just part of the royal family, but 00:01:26.697 --> 00:01:30.432 still people of high rank, and that's what we're looking at here. 00:01:30.432 --> 00:01:35.308 This text was found in the tomb of someone named Hunefer, a scribe. 00:01:35.308 --> 00:01:37.395 A scribe had a priestly status, 00:01:37.395 --> 00:01:39.608 so we are dealing here with somebody who was literate, 00:01:39.608 --> 00:01:43.198 who occupied a very high station in Egyptian culture. 00:01:43.198 --> 00:01:46.473 And we actually see representations of a man who had died, 00:01:46.473 --> 00:01:48.522 who was burried with this text 00:01:48.522 --> 00:01:52.783 and if you look on the left edge of the scroll at the top, 00:01:52.783 --> 00:01:55.471 you can see a crouching figure in white, 00:01:55.471 --> 00:01:59.973 Hunefer, who is speaking to a line of crouching deities, 00:01:59.973 --> 00:02:02.665 gods prophesing the good life that he lived 00:02:02.665 --> 00:02:04.846 that he's earned a place in the afterlife. 00:02:04.908 --> 00:02:08.172 Well, what we have below is a scene of judgement 00:02:08.172 --> 00:02:10.747 whether Hunefer has lived a good life 00:02:10.747 --> 00:02:13.566 and deserves to live into the afterlife, 00:02:13.566 --> 00:02:17.676 and we see Hunefer again, this time standing on the far left 00:02:17.676 --> 00:02:21.115 and we can recognize him beacause he's wearing the same white robe 00:02:21.115 --> 00:02:26.297 and he's being led by the hand by a god with a jackal head, Anubis, 00:02:26.297 --> 00:02:27.972 a good that is asscociated 00:02:27.972 --> 00:02:31.774 with the dead, with mumification, with cemeteries 00:02:31.774 --> 00:02:34.357 and he's carrying in his left hand and ankh, 00:02:34.357 --> 00:02:38.829 a symbol of eternal life, and that's exactly what Hunefer is after. 00:02:38.829 --> 00:02:41.108 If we continue to move toward the right, 00:02:41.108 --> 00:02:44.308 we see that jackal-headed god again, Anubis, this time crouching 00:02:44.308 --> 00:02:49.279 and adjusting a scale, making sure that it is exactly balanced. 00:02:49.279 --> 00:02:52.473 On the left side, we see the heart of the dead 00:02:52.473 --> 00:02:56.532 so the heart is on one side of the scale, on the other side there's a feather. 00:02:56.532 --> 00:03:02.034 The feather belongs to Ma'at that we also see at the very top of the scale, 00:03:02.111 --> 00:03:04.506 and we can see a feather coming out of her head. 00:03:04.506 --> 00:03:08.872 Now, Ma'at is a deity associated with divine order, 00:03:08.933 --> 00:03:11.578 with living an ethical, ordered life. 00:03:11.763 --> 00:03:15.962 And in this case, the feather is lower, the feather is heavier. 00:03:15.962 --> 00:03:20.972 Hunfer has lived an ethical life, and therefore is brought into the afterlife. 00:03:20.972 --> 00:03:26.945 So he won't be devoured by that evil-looking beast next to Anubis. 00:03:26.945 --> 00:03:33.695 That's Ammit who has the head of a crocodile, the body of a lion and a hind-quarters of a hippopotamus. 00:03:33.695 --> 00:03:39.695 He's waiting to devour Hunefer's heart, should he be found to have not lived an ethical life, 00:03:39.695 --> 00:03:42.671 not lived according to Ma'at. 00:03:42.763 --> 00:03:47.470 The Egyptians belived that only if you lived the ethical life, only if you pass this test, 00:03:47.470 --> 00:03:52.203 would you be able to have access to the afterlife. It's not like the Christian conception 00:03:52.234 --> 00:03:54.936 where you have an afterlife for everybody, 00:03:54.982 --> 00:03:57.007 no matter if they were blessed or sinful 00:03:57.007 --> 00:03:59.508 that is you either go to Heaven or you go to Hell. 00:03:59.508 --> 00:04:03.913 Here you only go to the afterlife if you have been found to be ethical. 00:04:03.990 --> 00:04:07.078 The next figure that we see is another deity, 00:04:07.078 --> 00:04:10.403 this time with the head of an ibis, of a bird. 00:04:10.465 --> 00:04:16.150 This is Thoth who is reporting the proceedings of what happens to Hunefer, 00:04:16.150 --> 00:04:20.806 and in this case reporting that he has succeeded and will move on to the afterlife. 00:04:20.806 --> 00:04:25.858 I love the representation of Thoth. He is so upright, and his arm is stretched out, 00:04:25.858 --> 00:04:30.318 rendered in such a way that we trust him that he's gonna get this right. 00:04:30.349 --> 00:04:35.307 Next we see Hunefer yet again, this time being introduced to 00:04:35.307 --> 00:04:40.306 one of the supreme gods in the Egyptian pantheon, Osiris. 00:04:40.306 --> 00:04:43.998 And he's being introduced to Osiris by Osiris' son, Horus. 00:04:43.998 --> 00:04:45.673 Horus is easy to remember, 00:04:45.673 --> 00:04:49.472 cause Horus is associated with a falcon, and here has a falcon's head. 00:04:49.472 --> 00:04:55.650 Horus is the son of Osiris and holds in his left hand an ankh which we saw earlier, 00:04:55.650 --> 00:04:58.525 and again that's a symbol of eternal life. 00:04:58.525 --> 00:05:02.252 He is introducing him to Osiris as you said, who is in this 00:05:02.252 --> 00:05:06.127 fabulous enclosure, speaks to the importance of this deity. 00:05:06.173 --> 00:05:13.746 He's enthroned, he carries symbols of Egypt, and he sits behind a lotus blossom, a symbol eternal life 00:05:13.746 --> 00:05:20.963 and on top of that lotus blossom, Horus' four children who represent the four cardinal points: 00:05:20.963 --> 00:05:22.996 North, South, East and West. 00:05:22.996 --> 00:05:27.534 The children of Horus are responsible for carrying for the internal organs 00:05:27.534 --> 00:05:29.848 that would be placed in Canopic jars, 00:05:29.848 --> 00:05:33.567 so they have a critical responsibility for keeping the dead preserved. 00:05:33.567 --> 00:05:36.701 We see Horus again, but symbolized as an eye. 00:05:36.701 --> 00:05:40.066 Now remember, Horus is represented as a falcon, as a bird, 00:05:40.066 --> 00:05:45.211 and so here even though he's the symbol of the eye, he has talons instead of hands, 00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:49.576 and those carry an ostrich feather, also a symbol of eternal life. 00:05:49.623 --> 00:05:53.702 The representation of the eye of Horus has to do with another ancient Egyptian myth, 00:05:53.702 --> 00:05:56.702 the battle between Horus and Seth, but that's another story. 00:05:56.702 --> 00:06:01.196 Now, behind Osiris we see two smaller standing female figures, 00:06:01.196 --> 00:06:06.351 one of whom is Isis, Osiris's wife, the other is her sister, Nephthys, 00:06:06.351 --> 00:06:09.563 who's a guardian of the afterlife and mother of Anubis, 00:06:09.563 --> 00:06:13.945 the figure who we saw at the very beginning leading Hunefer into judgment. 00:06:13.945 --> 00:06:18.639 Notice the white platform that those figure are standing on. That represents natron, 00:06:18.639 --> 00:06:24.264 the natural salts that were deposited in the Nile and they were used by the ancient Egyptians 00:06:24.310 --> 00:06:27.734 to dry out all of the mummies there in this room. 00:06:27.811 --> 00:06:29.567 So that they could be preserved. 00:06:29.567 --> 00:06:34.262 Actually, the word "preservation" is really a key to thinking about Egyptian culture generally, 00:06:34.262 --> 00:06:37.111 because this is a culture whose forms, 00:06:37.111 --> 00:06:42.291 whose representations and art remain remarkably the same for thousands of years. 00:06:42.291 --> 00:06:46.869 Even though there are periods of instability or even just before this we have Amarna Period 00:06:46.869 --> 00:06:50.526 where we saw a very different way of representing the human figure. 00:06:50.526 --> 00:06:55.145 What we see here, these forms look very familiar to us, 00:06:55.191 --> 00:06:57.274 because this is the typical way 00:06:57.304 --> 00:07:00.104 the ancient Egyptians represented the human figure. 00:07:00.104 --> 00:07:04.848 Even though this is a painting from the New Kingdom, these forms would have been recognizable 00:07:04.848 --> 00:07:08.852 to Egyptians thousands of years earlier in the Old Kingdom. 00:07:08.852 --> 00:07:12.484 And we see that mixture that we see very often in ancient Egyptian art, 00:07:12.576 --> 00:07:16.195 of words, of hieroglyphs, of writing and images. 00:07:16.548 --> 00:07:20.596 I love the mix, in our modern culture we really make a distinction 00:07:20.596 --> 00:07:22.912 between written language and the visual arts, 00:07:22.912 --> 00:07:24.397 and here in ancient Egypt, 00:07:24.397 --> 00:07:28.165 there really is this closer relationship, this greater sense of integartion.