THE COMING FORTH INTO LIGHT

 

Examination of an ancient Egyptian religious text

used to solicit the gods for eternal survival.

 

(The Papyrus of Ani, otherwise mistakenly known as the Book of the Dead.)

 

I posted the following to the Internet Ancient Egyptian Language discussion list on August 17, 2002.

 

Hello Everyone:

I am new to the list, and also new to understanding the ancient scripts. I hope you will be patient with me.

In a post dated Sun Aug 11, Christine El Mahdy made several remarks that led me to be bold.

“cast any translations to one side. Many of them, as we have found, are highly inaccurate.”

“If you want a demonstration of what I mean, try examining a small section the Book of the Dead . . .”

I recently purchased a copy of the Papyrus of Ani (The Egyptian Book of the Dead), translated by Raymond Faulkner, with some emendation by Ogden Goelet, Jr., Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1994. James Wasserman conceived the project. It is a beautiful reproduction of an original papyrus from circa 1250 BC, in full color, but reduced in size about 40% from the original. Apparently this is the first reprint of the papyrus published in 1890 in full size by Wallis Budge under the sponsorship of the Trustees of the British Museum. At that time the interested reader was expected to purchase the text, transliteration and translation published in 1895 in a separate volume. Budge repeats all hieroglyphs in the latter to obtain his transliteration. ((Dover reprint, New York, 1967.)

My interest was a study of ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, and especially the role of Osiris. I wanted to use the most original and reliable sources I could find, without the intervening and possibly interpretative altering of the meaning of the text from that intended by the ancient scribes.

In an Introduction Wasserman states:

 

“Several issues regarding this edition need to be discussed. My original idea, developed in detail for several years, was to follow the Ani Papyrus word for word. I planned to use Budge's translation, and his excellent key to the hieroglyphics, to present the text and images on the same page. Dr. (Ogden) Goelet, however, made clear, first, that Budge's translation falls far short of modern standards, and second, that the hieroglyphic text of the Ani Papyrus itself is of uneven quality, often much inferior to the excellence of its vignettes. He proposed that we use Faulkner's translation below the images of the Ani Papyrus, supplemented by his own translations where necessary. Our text would then represent the best translation from the best Egyptological sources for the specific chapter illustrated in the Ani Papyrus.

 

“Thus this volume combines the finest modern scholarship with the most beautifully illuminated ancient papyrus.”

 

I question that this is an accurate statement.

This remark led me to examine Budge’s publication, and to compare translations. Certainly, over the past hundred years, much greater understanding of the ancient script has evolved. Since Budge’s translation is still used widely among interested laypersons I wondered what differences existed and were they important? How might they affect my understanding and that of others?

I went through the first 10 columns of text in conducting my comparisons, as a test sample. For convenience I use Budge’s translation to show the differences.

I discovered the following items:

 

1.       Faulkner (Goelet) stripped two phrases completely. The first is in Column One in the opening remarks: “Behold Osiris Ani the scribe who records the holy offerings of all the gods.” This was reduced to “by Ani.” The second was in Column 5:  “to the ka of Osiris, the scribe Ani, triumphant before Osiris.” This was reduced “to the Ka of Ani.” A third removal is in Column 8 where the attributes “Prince, Life, Health, and Strength” of Ra are ignored.

 

Why Faulkner should remove these phrases is puzzling if he intended to be faithful to the text. Did he  feel they did not carry significant meaning? How many phrases were removed through the rest of the text?

 

2.         In Column 7 Faulkner translates “Enneads,” the Greek word for “Nine gods.” Apparently the idea of “nine” is common to the meaning of this glyph. Budge had trouble here, altering the first part of the glyph to mean “substance” when a group designation should be understood. I can see no reason why this glyph should not be read simply as “many gods.”

 

Can anyone offer suggestions?

 

3.         In several cases Faulkner translated “sky” instead of the older word “heaven” found in Budge. This is a dramatic shift in understanding. All old people understood heaven as a realm populated by spirit personalities who expressed desire, will, and purpose. The Egyptians subscribed to just such belief. The word sky denotes the vault containing merely the stars, without significance of being populated by celestial personalities. Such translation betrays the intent of the scribes, who reflected their culture. Hence, it virtually obliterates our ability to penetrate their religious psychology. This alteration certainly is a considerable deterrent to understanding the old text.

 

4.         A similar betrayal is seen when Faulkner in Column 9 translates “May Thoth and Maat write to you daily.” Budge has “Thoth and Maat both are your recorders.” The idea of celestial beings serving as recorders to the gods is again prevalent in the beliefs of many ancient people. They are personalities who preserve a record of the conduct of both mortals and immortals. This record then is used as a basis by which judgment may be made on subservient personalities. That judgment is the final determiner of survival in eternity. Egyptian religious belief is rife with such concept. In my opinion Faulkner here truly subverts the intent of the scribes.

 

5.         Another interesting alteration is found in Column 6 where I would translate  “givers of ka and celestial food.” The phrase follows the statement about the gods who pass judgment on the dead. Budge offered, “who provide food and abundance of meat.” Faulkner says, “who give food and provisions.” Clearly the context is celestial, not terrestrial. The glyph for ka is definitely present, without modifier as far as I can see. Why both these men should alter it to food I do not understand. These gods have the power to give a ka. The translations “provisions” and “abundance of meat” must then follow that sense but hopelessly lost by removing the significance of the scribal intent. (Budge became creative on this one.)

 

Other problems confront me but this should be sufficient to show why I view the translation as not faithful to the original purpose of the document.

 

Ernest

 

***************

 

The following continues exposition of the text, with details important to our understanding.

Budge was fully aware of, and described, the devolution of the Egyptian religious texts in the preface to his edition. He compared many papyrus scrolls with one another and with the pyramids texts of the Old Kingdom. I again offer full remarks in order to show how more recent views may be contributing to further confusion on our understanding of these important materials.

 

“Originally the text was the most important part of the work, and both it and its vignettes were the work of the scribe; gradually, however, the brilliantly illuminated vignettes were more and more cared for, and when the skill of the scribe failed, the artist was called in. In many fine papyri of the Theban period it is clear that the whole plan of the vignettes of a papyrus was set out by artists, who often failed to leave sufficient space for the texts to which they belonged; in consequence many lines of chapters are often omitted, and the last few lines of some texts are so much crowded as to be almost illegible. The frequent clerical errors also show that while an artist of the greatest skill might be employed on the vignettes, the execution of the text was left to an ignorant or careless scribe. Again, the artist at times arranged his vignettes in wrong order, and it is occasionally evident that neither artist nor scribe understood the matter upon which he was engaged. According to M. Maspero the scribes of the VIth dynasty did not understand the texts which they were drafting, and in the XIXth dynasty the scribe of a papyrus now preserved at Berlin knew or cared so little about the text which he was copying that he transcribed the LXXVIIth Chapter from the wrong end, and apparently never discovered his error although he concluded the chapter with its title. Originally each copy of the Book of the Dead was written to order, but soon the custom obtained of preparing copies with blank spaces in which the name of the purchaser might be inserted; and many of the errors in spelling and most of the omissions of words are no doubt due to the haste with which such " stock" copies were written by the members of the priestly caste, whose profession it was to copy them.”

 

In other words, preparation of these important religious documents later became strictly a commercial enterprise. We must deduce that both the later scribes and the purchasers did not understand the text, and were engaging is this exercise purely out of rote. The beauty of the vignettes took upper place, while the purpose of the original text was lost.  According to Maspero this inversion of importance began as early as the VIth dynasty, circa 2300 BC. This fact implies that the text had a long history prior to that time. The remarks by Wasserman suggest that the vignettes hold the greater importance once again, in contrast to the text, regardless of its “uneven quality.” Hence, the current translations also suffer from casualness of treatment.

I shall offer first the translation of the first page of the papyrus as currently published, then the translation by Budge, and finally a transliteration to show a possible shift in scholarly attitudes over the past one hundred years.

I shall lay out the passages side by side. The numbers in Budge’s list are the column numbers in the papyrus, which read downward, and then from right to left. Budge’s hieroglyphic figures are all reversed from the original. To maintain sense I have sometimes rearranged the words of the literal order in the transliteration. I refer to notes with small case letters. The notes offer more detailed review than I showed in the Internet post above.

Refer to the photocopies of the Papyrus of Ani from Faulkner and from Budge. Click on pictures to obtain larger images.

 

 

Note that the highlighted footnote symbols are links back and forth from the text.

 

 

 

(a) Over the past century an evolution of concept has taken place in the scholarly world, from views of God and heaven, with which the Egyptian works are replete, to new godless ideas that profoundly alter the meaning. Worship becomes merely a cult observance; heaven becomes the sky. According to the old views Heaven is populated by intelligent and purposeful beings; the sky has no population. (Faulkner substitutes sky three times in this short passage.) Thus we see an effort by modern scholars to transform the intent of the ancient texts to their views, not to express the intent of the ancient Egyptians. This is scholarly perversion.  It denies the meaning of the texts. It violates intellectual integrity.

 

(b) An entire phrase is eliminated in the Faulkner translation. “Behold Awsar, the scribe of the holy offerings of all the gods.”

 

(c) The Egyptian name for the Creator God more recently became pronounced as Wasir among some Egyptologists, with an initial “W” instead of the guttural “a” we know from Hebrew aleph, understood in Greek and English as “O” or “Aw.” Many examples of the translation of guttural Semitic and Egyptian sounds to easier Greek or English vowels can be cited. A prominent example is the Hebrew El = God, but pronounced with the modern vowel.

In How to Read Egyptian, Mark Collier and Bill Manley, University of California Press, 1998, briefly mention this change, and the fact that the name is not written with individual letters, but merely with glyphs that have no direct sound equivalent.

 

Indeed there is still some dispute as to the exact reading — in this book we adapt the more recent suggestion to read asir rather than wsir, not least since this brings out the parallel with the writing of the name Isis, ast.

 

The evolution is not really hard to understand.

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