painting
- Museum number
- EA91052
- Description
-
Hand-painted, canvas painting created for display purposes. The painting is of the 'Book of the Dead', Papyrus of Ani (frame 35), left side: Spell 110 (vignette).
It depicts life in the Afterworld: Ani has passed judgment and entered paradise. The large scene is the vignette for Spell 110. Ani is shown doing things he is unlikely to have done on earth, not only greeting various gods of the Underworld, but also paddling his own boat in the top register, which is labeled, at the far right, "Field of Offerings." In the second register, he harvests flax and drives oxen over a threshing floor, and he is plowing with oxen in the third, which is labeled over the cattle's backs as the "Field of Reeds." Other captions in the scene make it clear that this is a blessed land, a land of abundance. The labours of Ani, who is here referred to only as Osiris, will ensure provisions for himself and these celestial spirits. Ani will join them soon - already his boat has the same shape as the one in which the sun god travels the sky. The fields are shown as surrounded by water. There are two small islands and an inlet or harbour for one of the boats. It is questionable, however, whether the four large registers should be interpreted as separate islands, since their numbers vary in different compositions. The fields are drawn as a combination of a plan and elevations. The plan takes the form of a highly schematic, and of course imaginary, map.
- Production date
- 20th century
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- This is one of eight historic and unique hand-painted painted canvasses depicting scenes from the Book of the Dead. They were accompanied by wooden labels. decorated the Upper Egyptian Galleries from the 1950s/1960s onwards. A ninth canvas is on display in the Upper Egyptian galleries. The painted canvasses form part of a long tradition of using painted reproductions of the Book of the Dead in the British Museum. Similar painted reproductions are described as being on display as early as 1904.
This canvas shows the left side of EA10470.35, part of the Book of the Dead of Ani.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
1950s-1970s, Upper Egyptian Galleries, BM
- Associated titles
Associated Title: Book of the Dead
- Department
- Egypt and Sudan
- BM/Big number
- EA91052
- Registration number
- .91052