The gate of the year

Scene from the Book of the Dead in the Papyrus Hunefer (about 1300 B.C.), now in the British Museum, London. The picture represents the ceremony of the “Opening of the Mouth”, a ritual performed in front of the tomb, on the day of burial, in order to reanimate the mummy of the dead, allowing it to breath, see, hear and enjoy the offerings in the afterworld. The ceremony was assisted by the relatives of the dead, who impersonated the role of the divinities in the myth of Osiris: some women of the family performed the role of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, Osiris’s sisters who wailed his death, while the dead man himself was identified with the god of the dead. The officiating priest wore a leopard skin and brought with him a special instrument to “open the mouth”. It is probable that the god Anubis, one of the most ancient funerary divinities, was impersonated by a priest, who possibly wore a jackal-head mask.

[Image: http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/tours_and_loans/international _exhibitions/book_of_the_dead.aspx]




World of the Dead

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Scene from the Book of the Dead in the Papyrus Hunefer (about 1300 B.C.), now in the British Museum, London. The picture represents the ceremony of the “Opening of the Mouth”, a ritual performed in front of the tomb, on the day of burial, in order to reanimate the mummy of the dead, allowing it to breath, see, hear and enjoy the offerings in the afterworld. The ceremony was assisted by the relatives of the dead, who impersonated the role of the divinities in the myth of Osiris: some women of the family performed the role of the goddesses Isis and Nephthys, Osiris’s sisters who wailed his death, while the dead man himself was identified with the god of the dead. The officiating priest wore a leopard skin and brought with him a special instrument to “open the mouth”. It is probable that the god Anubis, one of the most ancient funerary divinities, was impersonated by a priest, who possibly wore a jackal-head mask. [Image: http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/tours_and_loans/international _exhibitions/book_of_the_dead.aspx]