‘The Egyptian Book of the Dead’ Review: An Ancient Guide to the Afterlife

Los Angeles

About 3,500 years ago, did the Egyptian woman named Webennesre feel comforted at all being accompanied in death by a papyrus now on display at the Getty Villa exhibition “The Egyptian Book of the Dead”? Dating from between 1479 and 1400 B.C., the papyrus contains a “spell,” an incantation, perhaps entombed with her, that she had to recite after death (but which she also had to learn in advance—with the papyrus serving as a posthumous crib sheet). It contains the names of 14 mounds that she would have to traverse in the afterlife, each governed by a different god. The hills included the “Mound of the Wenet region”; its god was “Destroyer of ba souls” (the ba is one’s individual spirit). There was also a cavern; its god, we are told, was “Feller of fish.”