Exhibition: The Egyptian Book of the Dead

Ancient Egyptians believed they needed a guide through the shadowy land of the dead. Each one of them who could afford it paid for his or her guidebook. Now, the British Museum is hosting an exhibition on this route to the underworld – a fascinating and rather disturbing show.

A modern take on the Book of the Dead

The books contained not only guidance on the route to follow, but spells and incantations that would get the dead man through any difficulties – through police roadblocks, past Anubis the dog-headed god of judgment, past terrifying monsters like He Who Eats Snakes.

It’s a fascinating exhibition, because despite its subject matter it actually tells us a lot about what it was like to be alive in ancient Egypt. We see pictures of boats on the Nile, men playing board games, a man and his wife. The book was never known to the Egyptians as the Book of the Dead – if you did the rites and said the spells properly, you would in fact never die; it was ‘The Book of Coming Forth by Day’, into a world not all that different from our own.

But of course the fascination for us is the idea of death, the Egyptian mummies, the Hammer-House-of-Horror creepiness of the whole thing. I suspect some people will find this exhibition rather disappointing, because there’s not much creepiness to be seen; these books are not the Egyptian equivalent of Dracula, Frankenstein, or the Blair Witch Project – they’re more ‘Lonely Planet survival guide to Afterlife’.

And a bit like foreign holidays, what’s interesting is that what started out as a concern of Pharoahs and high court officials became democratised. My parents’ generation couldn’t afford to go abroad; a wet summer fortnight in Hunstanton or Hastings was about as far as they could get. In the same way, lower-ranking bureaucrats in the early dynasties had no hope of living for ever – but by the time of the New Kingdom, anyone could have a bash at immortality, by commissioning their own Book of the Dead and getting themselves mummified. You just had to have enough money…

Where: The British Museum

When: 4 November 2010 – 6 March 2011, details on booking site

How much: £12, £10 concessions

Photo by Vintagedept on flickr