If you are due to take a Nile Cruise or are researching the idea and you can visit London before the 6th of March 2011 it might be a good idea to visit the new exhibition “Journey Through The Afterlife: Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” that opened today.
According to yesterdays Guardian the exhibition “explores in more detail than ever before the ancient Egyptians beliefs revealed in the Book of the Dead, an illustrated map for the afterlife, promising to guide the spirits of the deceased through the spells and challenges necessary to achieve eternal life”
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Many of the documents have never been on public display because often they are so fragile. Apparently a Book of the Dead was a “collection of magic spells to help a departed person on their journey through the “Western Lands” where gods and monsters lived. The Book of the Dead was an illustrated guide to this landscape as well as a survival kit of spells to repel dangers”.
In the exhibition are “individualised books of the dead, each one making a different choice from the corpus of spells, movingly personalised with portraits of the dead person. Real-life details fill the books. gardens, houses, feasts, clothes, animals and boats are portrayed”.
The Guardian reviewer, “Jonathan Jones” writes that “The texts themselves are also very beautiful: it is amazing to look at precisely inked writing that is more than 3000 years old”.
He goes on to say, “No civilisation had a stronger belief in the afterlife than Egypt. Egypt looked over the horizon to the place where the setting sun vanished. Ancient Egyptians lived 35 years on average. Their obsession with the afterlife was a response to that reality. In their desire to perpetuate existance they demonstrated their passion for the world. They loved life and wanted it to go on forever. In the end perhaps there is nothing spooky about this exhibition. It is a hymn to the sun”.
The books were expensive and if you could afford it you would have one. If not you’d have to make your journey to the afterlife on your own native wit.
The show also has a display of coffins, amulets, tomb figurines, gilded masks and mummy effects.
I’m sure that a visit to the British Museum to see this exhibition would only enhance your enjoyment of your Nile Cruise.
