The Book of the Dead. The Papyrus of Ani, in the British Museum (Main and Plate Volumes, First Edition)

In 1888, Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (18571934), then a purchasing agent for the British Museum, acquired in Luxor what he later described in his memoirBy Nile and Tigris as “the largest roll of papyrus I had ever seen, tied with a thick band of papyrus, and in a perfect state of preservation.” It proved to be the funerary papyrus of Ani, a royal scribe and treasurer of the temples of Thebes and Abydos during the Nineteenth Dynasty, around 1250 BC. This manuscript is now universally regarded by Egyptologists as the largest, most complete, and most sumptuously illustrated of all surviving copies of theBook of the Dead, more properly titled the Book of Going Forth by Day.

The circumstances of the acquisition remain a well-documented episode in the history of Egyptology, and one that modern scholarship increasingly discusses with greater candour than it once did. Budge purchased the papyrus and other objects from antiquities dealers in Luxor. Shortly afterward, Egyptian authorities arrested the dealers and sealed their premises, and Budge himself later described arranging for his purchases to be removed from police custody before they could be impounded. Before shipment to England, Budge cut the seventy-eight-foot scroll into thirty-seven sheets of roughly equal length for ease of handling and study. This decision caused irreparable physical damage to the scroll and the legacy of the decision can be seen within the plate volume of this set: each of the thirty-seven plates corresponds precisely to one of Budge’s original cut sections.

The 1890 facsimile was, in its own right, a landmark achievement of Victorian colour lithography: over two hundred separate lithographic stones were prepared between 1888 and 1890 to print the thirty-seven plates, each reproducing its corresponding papyrus section in full colour at close to actual scale, the individual sheets folded and hinged with tape into a continuous two-page-spread binding structure unique to this production. The 1895 text volume followed, providing the complete hieroglyphic transcription with interlinear transliteration, and a word-for-word translation. It also contains Budge’s extensive introduction, covering the successive historical versions of the Book of the Dead, the legend of Osiris, Egyptian conceptions of the afterlife and the abode of the blessed, the gods of the underworld, and the funerary ceremonies the text was designed to accompany. Together, the two volumes constitute the founding modern scholarly edition of the single most influential document of ancient Egyptian religious literature, and the direct ancestor of every subsequent popular and scholarly edition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead published in the century and a quarter since.

BUDGE, E. A. Wallis (intro. to Plates, first edition, P. Le Page Renouf). The Book of the Dead. Facsimile of the Papyrus of Ani, in the British Museum [Plate volume] & The Book of the Dead. The Papyrus of Ani, in the British Museum. The Egyptian Text with Interlinear Transliteration and Translation, a Running Translation, Introduction, etc. [Text volume]. London: Printed by Order of the Trustees; sold at the British Museum and by Longmans & Co., B. Quaritch, Asher & Co., Kegan Paul, Trench, Trbner & Co., and Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1890 & 1895. 2 vols.

Text volume: First edition of the text, 1895.Large quarto. Bound in dark green crushed morocco and navy pebbled cloth boards, gilt titling to spine. clvi, 377 pp. Numerous black-and-white in-text illustrations.

Plate volume: First edition of the facsimile plates, 1890. Elephant folio. Quarter leather uniform in colour with the text volume, pebbled cloth boards. 37 double-page colour lithographic plates on folded and hinged sheets, reproducing the complete Papyrus of Ani. Introduction by Peter Le Page Renouf, then Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. This edition precedes the more commonly encountered second edition of the plates (executed by F. C. Price) that was produced in 1894 specifically to accompany the 1895 text. Overall very good across both volumes.

Please note: This is a two-volume set, the plate volume of considerable size and weight. Additional postage costs will apply. Please contact us for a shipping quote before purchase.

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Catalogue Number: HH000682