The Book of The Dead of ancient Egypt is not really a book. It is really called in ancient Egyptian "spells to go forth in the day". It is a compilation of texts written for the deceased and placed in funerary contexts. First carved in pyramid walls (The Pyramid Texts) in the Old Kingdom, then written all over the sides and inside walls of sarcophagi (Coffin texts) in the Middle Kingdom, and much more proliferating texts appeared in the New Kingdom and Late Period, accompanying the deceased in rolls of papyrus inside their coffins.
These texts are instructions for the deceased, abling him or her in the passage through eternity, how to avoid dangers and monsters, revealing secret names of guardians, insuring the deceased will pass all the phases of the judgement and that his herat does not betray him or her, instructing shuabtis and uschebtis on how to farm and crop in the fields of the afterlife, praising gods who help the deceased and identify with them like Osiris, a travelling or traversing eternity, going forth, is a proof that the individual is alive forever.
Organised by the University of Pisa in cooperation with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Italian Archaeological Centre in Cairo, this exhibition will feature 50 original drawings of the Tuscan Literary Expedition to Egypt (1828-29), which accompanied the French Expedition of J.F. Champollion - the man who famously made the first translations of the Rosetta Stone.
Shown alongside the drawings will be unpublished manuscripts of notes taken on site by renowned Italian Egyptologist Ippolito Rosellini, as well as letters to him by famous Egyptologists - including his great friend Champollion, plus Prussian Egyptologist Karl Lepsius and Dutch Egyptologist Conradus Leemans - and other material from the Rosellini Archives in the University Library of Pisa.
The cemetery at Saqqara is one of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt. Over six kilometres long, it boasts thousands of underground burial sites, as well as the six-step Djoser pyramid – Egypt’s oldest pyramid.
The ruins at Saqqara have long attracted the interest of explorers, grave-robbers and local people. Travellers first reported evidence of antiquities at Saqqara in the 16th century. The Djoser Pyramid and the smaller pyramids around it were hard to miss – but the size of the necropolis only became apparent with the advent of excavations in the 19th century.
Karl Richard Lepsius was a Prussian archaeological pioneer who advanced studies in Egyptology and Egyptian language understanding. Born in Naumburg in 1810, Lepsius soon moved away to study Greek and Roman archaeology at the universities of Leipzig, Gottingen and Berlin - before setting foot for Paris in 1833, where he would begin to get involved in the deciphering of Egyptian languages alongside scholars such as Jean Letronne; a disciple of Jean-Francois Champollion. Upon Champollion's death in 1832, Lepsius compiled a study of his book, Egyptian Grammar. He managed to expand on Champollion's hieroglyphic efforts, by emphasising that vowels were not written.
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