Day 34- Spearing a crocodile in The Book of the Dead

March 19, 2018

This gallery (133) is another one I wish I had visited earlier - or, maybe better, that the Met had a brief summary of Egyptian cosmology in one of the introductory galleries. Here I read, for example, that the figures I've seen depicted on the lids of canopic jars throughout - a human, a jackal, a falcon, and a baboon- represent the four sons of Horus, and that they protected different bodily organs (although, interestingly, by the Ptolemaic period, the organs were removed but wrapped and put back in the torso of the body, rather than being placed in canopic jars). There is also a fascinating display on the meaning of various amulets that were placed on parts of the body to assist passage into and well-being in the afterlife.

I suspect most visitors walk right by a magnificent Book of the Dead papyrus scroll that is unfurled along an entire long wall of this gallery and extends into the next gallery as well. But I felt obligated to take a look at it, and I am so glad I did. It was found in the burial of a scribe, Imhotep, and dates from about 320-200 B.C.E. The scroll, which, like Hebrew, reads from right to left, is in amazing condition, its hieratic script and illustrations still vivid. It's intereesting that "subheads" in the text were written in red ink; it reminds me of the layout of modern textbooks, which are meant to facilitate students' recognition of new sections. But who, after all, were the "readers" of the Book of the Dead? Did priests use the book during funeral services? Or were the scrolls just buried with the body for ritual purposes?

In any event, the scroll contains all kinds of incantations meant to guarantee a good afterlife and to protect the deceased from possible evils that the underworld might present.Today's image shows one such evil - crocodiles!  Crocodiles were associated with a serpent who embodied chaos and was the chief enemy of the sun god, Re. Having seen those fearsome Nile crocodiles, with their capacity for dragging off calves, children, and full-grown people to their death in the river, I completely understand why crocodiles were the consummate image of evil.  By fighting them off, Imhotep ensures the sun's safety -- and the continuation of human existence.  This portion of the scroll shows  a 2 1/2 inch high, cartoon-like Imhotep spearing a crocodile, which looks back at him. Four even larger beasts follow. Imhotep wears a close-fitting cap and a pleated skirt. What's remarkable are the detail and the variety of ways (boxes of various sizes, zigzags, cross-hatching) in which the crocodiles' scales are shown. Clearly, the artist was very familiar with what crocodiles look like!

Of course, the image of Imhotep spearing the crocodile makes me think of Saint George and leads me to wonder whether images of crocodiles were the ancestors of images of dragons in Western art. But where did dragons in Chinese art come from?

Speaking of making connections between cultures, I'm also struck by a couple of two-foot- high "corn mummies" of Osiris - mummiform figures made of linen, filled with grain, and topped with masks of the god's head. The caption explains that, since the grain could sprout, it symbolized rebirth and new life. I think of the importance of corn symbolism in Puebloan art, and while I suspect that the term "corn mummies" refers to the cob-shaped forms rather than the actual cultivation of corn (didn't this originate in the New World?), the association of grain with life holds across many cultures.

Finally, I've been wondering whether a good afterlife was the exclusive privilege of pharaohs and high officials. A caption suggests that the answer is no- but that the deceased had to have enough money to have the proper rituals performed and the right equipment for the underworld buried with him or her.