3.Papyrus from the Book of the Dead of the Scribe Ani

 

Papyrus showing the judgement of death in the presence of Osiris, from Thebes Egypt, on loan from the British Museum

1275 BC

 

Paper is crucial to modern life. Though the modern age now sees the cyber cloud as the fount of all knowledge and the absolute repository of information, the digitalised form remains to some extent abstracted and is concretised only once it is physically printed on paper. Paper conserves the tactility and smell which have been burned at the stake by the ‘kindle’ and the ‘iPad’. The material as we know it traces its origins back to 2nd century China, when a court eunuch by the name of Cai Lun (50-121 AD) invented its manufacture. The discovery allowed the rapid development of Chinese literature and paved the way for a Golden Age; paper served as an adequate substitute for silk in many applications, the Empire was able to export much greater quantities of its most precious commodity. The polymath poet Zhang Heng (78-139 AD), a contemporary of Cai Lun, writes that with his wealth the Emperor Wu sought immortality and to this end

 

         Erected bronze immortals on tall towers,

         To receive pure dew from beyond the clouds.

         He pulverized carnelian jades for his morning repast,

         Certain that life could be prolonged.

 

Zhang Heng then drives home his point:

 

         Yet, if it were possible to remain from generation to generation,

         Why so hurried in building a grand mausoleum?

Lord Relies-on-Nothing by Zhang Heng, translation by Knechtges (1982)

 

For centuries Cantabrigian students have worked with paper to further their learning and to present their ideas to their omniscient supervisors, which is often a matter of life and death. This is not a new practice: the Ancient Egyptians were confronted with a similar situation, but they used papyrus. Papyrus is a precursor of the modern ‘pulp paper’ invented by the Chinese and is manufactured quite differently. The Egyptians believed that at death they had a final supervision with Anubis and their Director of Studies, Osiris. The soul would be put through forty-two gruelling questions, a test known as the ‘Negative Confession’ before the final assessment, ‘The Weighing of the Heart’, took place in front of a jury of twelve gods. The candidate had to be careful to greet the examiners with due reverence; in a similar fashion to the scribe Ani (a 1st class student):

 

         Hail, ye who steal and crush heart-cases [and who make the heart of a man to go through its transformations according to his deeds: let not what he hath done harm him before you]. Homage to you, O ye Lords of Eternity, ye masters of everlastingness, take ye not this heart of Osiris Ani into your fingers, and this heart-case, and cause ye not things of evil to spring up against it, because this heart belongeth to the Osiris Ani, and this heart-case belongeth to him of the great names (Thoth), the mighty one, whose words are his members.

 The Book of the Dead, Papyrus of the Scribe Ani

 

At this point, the deceased’s heart was weighed on a pair of scales against the goddess Maat, the embodiment of truth and justice, represented by an ostrich feather. If the scales balanced- the deceased had passed the tripos of life, would hold hands with Anubis and Osiris and take his or her place in the after-life, becoming maa-kheru, which means ‘the true of voice’. Then would begin ‘The praises and glorifyings of coming out from and of going into the glorious Khert-Neter’ where one would be asked about the various deities present:

 

Who is this?

 

[And must reply, as is common knowledge:]

 

They are the drops of blood which came forth from the phallus of Ra when he went forth to perform his own mutilation. These drops of blood sprang into being under the forms of the gods Hu and Sa, who are in the bodyguard of Ra, and who accompany the god Tem daily and every day.

The Book of the Dead, Papyrus of the Scribe Ani

 

However, in case of imbalance, Ammit, the Devourer- ‘her forepart is like that of a crocodile, the middle of her body is like that of a lion, her hind quarters are like those of a hippopotamus’- took no time to ingurgitate the soul’s heart and plunge the wretched soul into eternal darkness.

 

Read on next week, to see what fascinating object we’ll have in store for you in this brand new series of The History of a Cantabrigian Student in Nine Objects.

 

Missed a previous episode? Catch up here: 

Episode 1 - http://www.varsity.co.uk/features/8974

Episode 2 - http://www.varsity.co.uk/features/8991