Words for the journey beyond life

Look at the rows of signs on the papyrus. Their small scale asks for a different kind of attention from a great stone statue. These marks were written for someone. This funerary papyrus names Tchenena, who lived during the early Eighteenth Dynasty, more than three thousand years ago. The text belongs to what we call the Book of the Dead. That title covers a collection of spells which could be selected and brought together for a deceased person. There was no single fixed volume that everyone received. Written words were intended to offer help and protection in the passage beyond life. You may be unable to read the signs, but you can still notice how they have been arranged on this long, fragile surface. They preserve Tchenena’s name and the words selected for the passage beyond life. Take a moment with that scale. The same concerns about protection that we saw in stone and wood appear here in writing on papyrus.