Book of the Dead Papyrus with Chapters 100 and 129

The papyrus was still folded when it came to the museum, and was wrapped in linen. One of its sides was covered with a dark substance, and the museum’s accession card for the papyrus indicates that the amulet plaque 24.2.19 had been attached to this bundle. Several features suggest that both objects had been placed on a wrapped mummy. At first, it was unclear if the two pieces had a direct connection to one other or whether they were coincidentally placed in the same area and became stuck together. The papyrus was unfolded in 1931 and turned out to belong to the Mistress of the House Garjry (which seems to be a non-Egyptian name) and to contain two Book of the Dead spells, spells 100 and 129.

Spell 100 appears quite often in single-spell manuscripts, and in larger papyri it frequently occurs alongside amulet spells such as BD 155, 156, and 160. The small Book of the Dead papyrus here can be identified as an amulet papyrus that was placed on the mummy of Garjry, and its texts were presumably recited as part of her funeral rites. Most interestingly, the only two texts here occur together with spells specifically for golden amulets as part of the long papyrus of a man called Montuemhat that specifically mentions a ritual for gold amulets. The small papyrus and the amulet plaque to which it was stuck can thus be seen in direct relationship to one another: both objects were part of the same ritual, which was performed over the mummy of the woman Garjry, who is named as the deceased in the small papyrus.

Isabel Stünkel 2020

Purchased in Luxor from Sayed Molattam, 1924.

Stünkel, Isabel 2015. "An amulet plaque and a Book of the Dead papyrus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and some observations on gold amulets." In Weitergabe: Festschrift für die Ägyptologin Ursula Rößler-Köhler zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Ludwig Morenz and Amr El Hawary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 407–27.