Judgement in the Presence of Osiris, Hunefer's Book of the Dead

Hunefer's Judgement in the presence of Osiris, Book of the Dead, 19th Dynasty, New Kingdom, c. 1275 B.C.E., papyrus, Thebes, Egypt (British Museum).

Erratum: near the end of the video we say that Nephthys and Anubis are siblings, this is not correct.

Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

Figures represented in order of appearence (left to right):
+Hunefer (deceased scribe)
+Anubis (jackal-headed god associated with mummification, burial and the afterlife, he is the son of Nephthys)
+Ma'at (goddess of order and ethical judgement. She wears a feather associated with truth and is here shown at the top of the scales)
+Ammit or Ammut (demon represented as part crocodile, lion and hippopotamus. Devoured hearts that failed the test of Ma'at)
+Thoth (here represented as an Ibis-headed god recording the fate of the deceased, in this case Hunefer)
+Horus (falcon-headed god/also eye of Horus, associated with the king and son of Osiris)
+Horus's 4 sons Imsety, Duamutef, Hapi, Qebehsenuef (associated with the 4 cardinal points, protection of vital organs of the deceased)
+Osiris (enthroned wearing Atef crown; he is associated with death and is one of the most powerful gods in the Egyptian pantheon)
+Isis (goddess protector of mummys and Osiris and in some instances, the mother of Horus and sister of Nephthys)
+Nephthys (goddess who, along with her sister Isis, protects mummys and Osiris, mother of Anubis, sister and wife of Seth)

>>: We're in the British
Museum in London,

in a room that is filled
with ancient Egyptian mummies,

and as a result it's also filled
with modern children.

>>: And tourists. It's a great room.
There's great stuff here.

>>: We're looking at a fragment of a scroll

which is largely ignored.

>>: It's a papyrus scroll.

>>: And papyrus is a reed
that grows in the Nile Delta

that was made into a kind
of paper-like substance

and actually was probably the single most important surface for writing

right up into the medieval.

>>: We're looking at a written text of something
that we call the "Book of the Dead"

which the ancient Egyptians
had other names for,

but which was an ancient text

that had spells and prayers
and incantations,

things that the dead needed in the afterlife.

>>: This is a tradition that goes all the way
back to the Old Kingdom,

writing that we call "pyramid text."

These were sets of instructions
for the afterlife,

and than later we have coffin text,
writing on coffins

and then even later in the New Kingdom,

we have scrolls like this
that we call the Books of the Dead.

>>: Sometimes the texts
were written on papyrus,

like the one we are looking at.

Sometimes they were
written on shrouds

that the dead were buried in.

>>: So these were really important texts that were originally just for kings in the Old Kingdom,

but came to be used by people who
were not just part of the royal family,

but still people of high rank, and that's
what we're looking at here.

This text was found in the tomb
of someone named Hunefer, a scribe.

>>: A scribe had a priestly status.

So we are dealing here
with somebody who was literate,

who occupied a very
high station in Egyptian culture.

And we actually see representations
of the man who had died,

who was buried with this text

and if you look on the left edge
of the scroll at the top,

you can see
a crouching figure in white,

Hunefer, who is speaking
to a line of crouching deities,

gods prophesing the good life
that he lived

that he's earned a place
in the afterlife.

>>: Well, what we have below
is a scene of judgment

whether Hunefer
has lived a good life

and deserves to live
into the afterlife,

and we see Hunefer again, this time
standing on the far left.

>>: And we can recognize him
because he's wearing the same white robe.

>>: And he's being led by the hand by a god
with a jackal head, Anubis,

a god that is asscociated

with the dead, with mumification,
with cemeteries

and he's carrying in his left hand an ankh.

>>: A symbol of eternal life, and
that's exactly what Hunefer is after.

>>: If we continue to move
toward the right,

we see that jackal-headed god again,
Anubis, this time crouching

and adjusting a scale.

>>: Making sure that
it is exactly balanced.

On the left side, we see
the heart of the dead.

>>: So the heart is on one side of the scale.
On the other side there's a feather.

The feather belongs to Ma'at who we also see
at the very top of the scale,

and we can see a feather coming out of her head.

Now, Ma'at is a deity associated with divine order,

with living an ethical, ordered life.

>>; And in this case, the feather is lower.
The feather is heavier.

Hunefer has lived an ethical life, and therefore
is brought into the afterlife.

>>: So he won't be devoured by that
evil-looking beast next to Anubis.

That's Ammit who has the head of a crocodile,
the body of a lion,

and the hind-quarters of
a hippopotamus.

He's waiting to devour Hunefer's heart, should he be found to have not lived an ethical life,

not lived according to Ma'at.

>>: The Egyptians belived that only if you lived the ethical life, only if you pass this test,

would you be able to have access to the afterlife. It's not like the Christian conception

where you have an afterlife for everybody,

no matter if they were blessed or sinful,

that is, you either go
to Heaven or you go to Hell.

Here you only go to the afterlife if
you have been found to be ethical.

>>; The next figure that we
see is another deity,

this time with the head of an ibis, of a bird.

This is Thoth who is reporting the proceedings of what happens to Hunefer,

and in this case reporting that he has succeeded and will move on to the afterlife.

>>: I love the representation of Thoth.

He is so upright, and his arm is stretched out,

rendered in such a way that we trust him that he's gonna get this right.

>>: Next we see Hunefer yet again, this time
being introduced to

one of the supreme gods
in the Egyptian pantheon, Osiris.

And he's being introduced to Osiris
by Osiris' son, Horus.

>>: Horus is easy to remember,

because Horus is associated with a falcon,
and here has a falcon's head.

Horus is the son of Osiris and holds in his left hand an ankh which we saw earlier,

and again that's a symbol of eternal life.

He is introducing him to Osiris
as you said, who is in this

fabulous enclosure, speaks
to the importance of this deity.

>>: He's enthroned. He carries symbols of Egypt,

and he sits behind a lotus blossom,
a symbol of eternal life

and on top of that lotus blossom, Horus' four children who represent the four cardinal points:

North, South, East and West.

>>: The children of Horus are responsible
for caring for the internal organs

that would be placed in Canopic jars.

So they have a critical responsibility
for keeping the dead preserved.

>>: We see Horus again,
but symbolized as an eye.

Now remember, Horus is represented
as a falcon, as a bird,

and so here even though he's the symbol of the eye, he has talons instead of hands,

and those carry an ostrich feather, also
a symbol of eternal life.

>>: The representation of the eye of Horus
has to do with another ancient Egyptian myth,

the battle between Horus and Seth,
but that's another story.

>>: Now, behind Osiris we see two
smaller standing female figures,

one of whom is Isis, Osiris's wife.
The other is her sister, Nephthys,

who's a guardian of the afterlife
and sister of Anubis,

the figure who we saw at the very beginning leading Hunefer into judgment.

>>: Notice the white platform
that those figures are standing on.

That represents natron,
the natural salts that are depostied

in the Nile and they were used
by the ancient Egyptians

to dry out all of the mummies
that are in this room

so that they could be preserved.

>>: Actually, the word "preservation" is really a key to thinking about Egyptian culture generally,

because this is a culture whose forms,

whose representations in art remained
remarkably the same for thousands of years.

Even though there are periods of instability
or even just before this we have the Amarna Period

where we saw a very different way
of representing the human figure.

What we see here,
these forms look very familiar to us,

because this is the typical way

the ancient Egyptians
represented the human figure.

>>: Even though this is a painting
from the New Kingdom,

these forms would have been recognizable

to Egyptians thousands of years earlier
in the Old Kingdom.

>>: And we see that mixture
that we see very often in ancient Egyptian art,

of words, of hieroglyphs, of writing and images.

>>: I love the mix.

In our modern culture we really make a distinction between written language and the visual arts,

and here in ancient Egypt,

there really is this closer relationship,
this greater sense of integartion.