What do You think about The Egyptian Book Of The Dead (1967)?
I've reviewed numerous books that people have no business 'reviewing' and this is definitely one of them. How could anyone review a translation, which could be totally wrong or even lacking in tiny yet important details that could drastically change the meaning. Still, this is budge, and when it comes to Egyptian text, he's the man. So you can't criticize the translation, I don't care how long you've studied hieroglyphs, you could be just as wrong as budge, and the story is in essence the tale of night and day, life and death and the essential theological template for most, if not all religions. So what's left? Well, it has a cool cover and looks good on a bookshelf.
—Adam Cummings
Super quick read. Took me about 30 minutes but it had some interesting information in it. It was a free download for my Kindle but I have always been interested with the Egyptian culture and especially their death rituals and beliefs. This is kind of like a summary of their beliefs, well some of them. The Book of the Dead refers to documents that were left in burial chambers, tombs, etc. and not to one book in particular. This synopsis gives the story of Osiris and how he became the King of the underworld and his long-standing fued with Set. It tells how Isis was able to raise Osiris from death long enough to get a son, Horus, out of it and so on. Lots more little tidbits and information in a very short book. I learned some things I did not know and enjoyed it.
—Shelley
This translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead has a lot of great illustrations, which, for an amateur art history buff, are gravy. Unfortunately, the scholarly value of this edition isn’t so great. Seleem seems to have embraced Egyptian religion wholeheartedly, and spends most of the commentary pointing out how advanced the Egyptians were and how their spirituality is superior to Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions. (He also seems to think that said traditions come from Egyptian ideas.) He also made a lot of references to mistranslations which he, in his magnanimity, has corrected; for example, the word that has been typically translated as “god” really means “law”. According to him, the Egyptians were monotheistic; the various “gods” were really “laws”, aspects of the natural order. (I feel obliged to point out that the Greeks were also monotheistic in this sense, as they too believed in a single, impersonal deity, which was above and beyond the shenanigans and goings-on on Mount Olympus.)The Book of the Dead, which Seleem says should be translated as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, is a guide to the afterlife. It was typically buried with the dead to provide them a sort of map through Purgatory (which they called “the Dwat”) to Heaven, where they were either reincarnated or permitted to go to the Elysian fields. Seleem points out that this idea of reincarnation appeared in the Hindu religion as well, and, he thinks, was borrowed from Egyptian spirituality, since the soul is reincarnated if it hasn’t been sufficiently righteous.Among his other irrelevant New Age-y asides, Seleem specifically repudiates Christianity, stating that the Egyptian religion is superior because salvation is by an individual’s acts, not by Christ. In addition, he remarks at one point, “Christ was crucified by those who later glorified him.” Such statements hardly increase one’s confidence in the accuracy of the translation.If you’re looking for a shallow overview of the Book of the Dead with some awesome pictures, this is a good edition. But if you’re looking for a scholarly treatment of the subject, which I was, you’d better look elsewhere.
—Kathryn
