The Greenfield papyrus is a papyrus that contains an ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and is named after Mrs. Edith Mary Greenfield, who presented it to the Trustees of the British Museum in May 1910. [1] [2] Now in the collections of the British Museum, London, it is one of the longest papyri in existence with a length of 37 metres. [3]
The Greenfield Papyrus is a papyrus roll with an original length of about 37 meters and about 47 cm wide. Nowadays, the manuscript is divided into 96 pieces. The manuscript contains both text and drawings, the text is written on the recto side and in hieratic script and partly in hieroglyphs. The Book of the Dead includes a series of hymns, litanies, tributes and homages. The papyrus is dated to between the 950s and 930s BC during Egypt's Twenty-first Dynasty. The manuscript describes the burial of the priest Pinudjem II and his wife Neskhons's daughter Nesitanebetashru around the year 930 BC. One of the scenes shows when the god Shu (God of Air) helps Nut (Goddess of the Sky) to divide heaven and earth, represented as Geb (God of the Earth). Among the scenes are also parts of the creation of the world according to the Egyptian creation myth with the god Atum in the centre.
It is not known when and how the papyrus was discovered but the English collector Greenfield acquired the manuscript around 1880. The site of discovery is believed to be the necropolis of Deir el-Bahri. After Greenfield's death, his widow Edith Mary Greenfield donated the manuscript in 1910 to the British Museum; the papyrus archive number is BM EA 10554-87. In 1912, Keeper of the Egyptian collection at the museum, Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge published a translation in the book The Greenfield papyrus in the British Museum - The funerary papyrus of Princess Nesitanebtȧshru, daughter of Painetchem II and Nesi-Khensu, and priestess of Ȧmen-R̄a at Thebes, about B.C. 970.
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
Thoth is an ancient Egyptian deity. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat, and his wife was Ma'at. He was the god of the Moon, wisdom, knowledge, writing, hieroglyphs, science, magic, art and judgment.
Nut, also known by various other transcriptions, is the goddess of the sky, stars, cosmos, mothers, astronomy, and the universe in the ancient Egyptian religion. She was seen as a star-covered nude woman arching over the Earth, or as a cow. She was depicted wearing the water-pot sign (nw) that identifies her.
Amunet or Imnt is a primordial goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. Thebes was the center of her worship through the last dynasty, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, in 30 BCE. She is attested in the earliest known of Egyptian religious texts and, as was the custom, was paired with a counterpart who is entitled with the same name, but in the masculine, Amun. They were thought to have existed prior to the beginning of creation along with three other couples representing primeval concepts.
Ammit was an ancient Egyptian goddess with the forequarters of a lion, the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, and the head of a crocodile—the three largest "man-eating" animals known to ancient Egyptians. In ancient Egyptian religion, Ammit played an important role during the funerary ritual, the Judgment of the Dead.
The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BC. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated r(ꜣ)w n(y)w prt m hrw(w), is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light. "Book" is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts consisting of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife and written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years. Karl Richard Lepsius introduced for these texts the German name Todtenbuch, translated to English as Book of the Dead.
The Book of Abraham is a collection of writings claimed to be from several Egyptian scrolls discovered in the early 19th century during an archeological expedition by Antonio Lebolo. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints purchased the scrolls from a traveling mummy exhibition on July 3, 1835, to be translated into English by Joseph Smith. According to Smith, the book was "a translation of some ancient records... purporting to be the writings of Abraham, while he was in Egypt, called the Book of Abraham, written by his own hand, upon papyrus". Smith said the papyri described Abraham's early life, his travels to Canaan and Egypt, and his vision of the cosmos and its creation.
The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Coptic, spanning a period of 100 years in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives, and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines such as epistolography, law, society, religion, language and onomastics. The Elephantine documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives: divorce documents, the manumission of slaves, and other business. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved the documents.
The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript in the form of a scroll with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations that was created c. 1250 BCE, during the Nineteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt. Egyptians compiled an individualized book for certain people upon their death, called the Book of Going Forth by Day, more commonly known as the Book of the Dead, typically containing declarations and spells to help the deceased in their afterlife. The Papyrus of Ani is the manuscript compiled for the Theban scribe Ani.
Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge was an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum and published numerous works on the ancient Near East. He made numerous trips to Egypt and the Sudan on behalf of the British Museum to buy antiquities, and helped it build its collection of cuneiform tablets, manuscripts, and papyri. He published many books on Egyptology, helping to bring the findings to larger audiences. In 1920, he was knighted for his service to Egyptology and the British Museum.
The Joseph Smith Papyri (JSP) are Egyptian funerary papyrus fragments from ancient Thebes dated between 300 and 100 BC which, along with four mummies, were once owned by Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. Smith purchased the mummies and papyrus documents from a traveling exhibitor in Kirtland, Ohio in 1835. Smith said that the papyrus contained the records of the ancient patriarchs Abraham and Joseph.
A hypocephalus is a small disk-shaped object generally made of stuccoed linen, but also of papyrus, bronze, gold, wood, or clay, which ancient Egyptians from the Late Period onwards placed under the heads of their dead. The circle was believed to magically protect the deceased, cause the head and body to be enveloped in light and warmth, making the deceased divine. It replaced the earlier cow-amulet.
Egyptian medical papyri are ancient Egyptian texts written on papyrus which permit a glimpse at medical procedures and practices in ancient Egypt. These papyri give details on disease, diagnosis, and remedies of disease, which include herbal remedies, surgery, and magical incantations. Many of these papyri have been lost due to grave robbery. The largest study of the medical papyri to date has been undertaken by Humboldt University of Berlin and was titled Medizin der alten Ägypter.
The Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus, is one of the extant medical papyri, from ancient Egypt. It is dedicated to magical incantations against headaches and remedies for anorectal ailments, and is dated around 1200 BC. Part of the papyri collection of Alfred Chester Beatty, it is sometimes referred to simply as the Chester Beatty Papyri, but should not to be confused with the Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, alias Chester Beatty Papyri.
The Joseph Smith Hypocephalus was a papyrus fragment, part of a larger collection of papyri known as the Joseph Smith Papyri, found in the Gurneh area of Thebes, Egypt, around the year 1818. The owner's name, Sheshonq, is written in the hieroglyphic text on the same hypocephalus. Multiple hypocephali in the British Museum are very similar to the Joseph Smith hypocephalus in layout and text, and were also uncovered in Thebes, Egypt. Other hypocephali also bear a strong resemblance.
Gebelein was a town in Egypt. It is located on the Nile, about 40 km south of Thebes, in the New Valley Governorate.
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Medjed is a minor deity mentioned in certain copies of the Book of the Dead. While not much is known about the deity, his ghost-like depiction in the Greenfield papyrus has earned him popularity in modern Japanese culture, and he has appeared as a character in video games and anime.
Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs were centered around a variety of complex rituals that were influenced by many aspects of Egyptian culture. Religion was a major contributor, since it was an important social practice that bound all Egyptians together. For instance, many of the Egyptian gods played roles in guiding the souls of the dead through the afterlife. With the evolution of writing, religious ideals were recorded and quickly spread throughout the Egyptian community. The solidification and commencement of these doctrines were formed in the creation of afterlife texts which illustrated and explained what the dead would need to know in order to complete the journey safely.
The Assessors of Maat were 42 minor ancient Egyptian deities of the Maat charged with judging the souls of the dead in the afterlife by joining the judgment of Osiris in the Weighing of the Heart.
Papyrus 121 is a Greek magical manuscript written in papyrus from the 3rd century CE. This is one of that are called Greek Magical Papyri. The papyri had been brought from Egypt by Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge.
© Trustees of the British Museum British Museum Collection Database Search (data retrieved shows 96 separate entries) retrieved 18:06GMT 2.10.11
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