The Book of the Dead. The Papyrus of Ani, in the British Museum (Main and Plate Volumes, First Edition)

A$4,200 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

In 1888, Sir Ernest Alfred Thompson Wallis Budge (1857–1934), then a purchasing agent for the British Museum, acquired in Luxor what he later described in his memoir By Nile and Tigris as "the largest roll of papyrus I had ever seen, tied with a thick band of papyrus, and in a perfect state of preservation." It proved to be the funerary papyrus of Ani, a royal scribe and treasurer of the temples of Thebes and Abydos during the Nineteenth Dynasty, around 1250 BC. This manuscript is now universally regarded by Egyptologists as the largest, most complete, and most sumptuously illustrated of all surviving copies of the Book of the Dead , more properly titled the Book of Going Forth by Day . The circumstances of the acquisition remain a well-documented episode in the history of Egyptology, and one that modern scholarship increasingly discusses with greater candour than it once did. Budge purchased the papyrus and other objects from antiquities dealers in Luxor. Shortly afterward, Egyptian authorities arrested the dealers and sealed their premises, and Budge himself later described arranging for his purchases to be removed from police custody before they could be impounded. Before shipment to England, Budge cut the seventy-eight-foot scroll into thirty-seven sheets of roughly equal length for ease of handling and study. This decision caused irreparable physical damage to the scroll and the legacy of the decision can be seen within the plate volume of this set: each of the thirty-se

• Binding: Hardcover

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