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Whatever actually happened in this interesting period in Egyptian history, after Akhenaten’s death, the religion of Egypt returned to its traditional gods and its traditional interests. The change of this young heir’s name to the now familiar Tutankhamon suggests that he was early put in the tutelage of the Osiris priesthood, while the religion of his predecessor, whatever it was exactly, was zealously erased. After Akhenaten we find The Egyptian Book of the Dead, which seems to signal the orthodox renaissance after its brief interregnum.

Beyond the brief religious reform, we might wonder how many other religious reformations were tried and defeated in Egyptian religion. Considering how important the mortuary cult was and how few people had access to it because of its expense, it is a wonder that more revolutions are not recorded. The Egyptian penchant for wiping out the memory of history’s losers is, no doubt, part of the issue. Another part is the likelihood that some way for ordinary people to share in the ultimate felicity was present but that it did not reach historical remembrance.

Whatever the reason, the failure of Akhenaten’s reform brought with it a new creative stage in Egyptian religion. The centerpiece of the restoration was a new book: The Egyptian Book of the Dead. By itself it is not an innovation. The Egyptian Book of the Dead is a compilation and anthologization of similar sorts of material found in the Coffin Texts, under the further influence of Osirification. There is no telling whether the texts were brought together in this way in the early copies. Our extant books are a kind of expanded anthology, evidently without too much editorial activity, in which every text known at the time was included in some way. It first appears on the interior walls of the coffin of Queen Mentuhotep, who ruled in the Middle Kingdom. The text was not written in either the classic, very educated and formal hieroglyphics or the less formal cursive hieroglyphics but in a yet easier script, known as hieratic. Sometime after the text was deciphered, the coffin itself disappeared, so no new research can be done on it.

In The Egyptian Book of the Dead, quintessentially the work of the New Kingdom, which is historically parallel with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, it is the heart of the deceased that is balanced against ma’at, symbolized by a single feather. The title, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, is a Western invention, just as inaccurate as our title for the Bardo Chodol, the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. The Egyptian work’s actual title is “The Book of Going Forth by Day,” meaning that the spells contained within the book gave its benefactors the power to live during the day instead of just existing at night, like ghosts and spirits. Chapters 30 and 125 of The Egyptian Book of the Dead are especially concerned with the judgment scene. In chapter 125, we find this famous negative confession:

I have not done that which the gods abominate.

I have not defamed a slave to his superior

I have not made (anyone) sick.

I have not made (anyone) weep.

I have not killed.

I have given no order to a killer.

I have not caused anyone suffering.

I have not cut down on the food-(income) in the temples,

I have not damaged the bread of the gods.

I have not taken the loaves of the blessed (dead).

I have not had sexual relations with a boy.

I have not defiled myself. (ANET, 34)

Here, we find the values that were expected of the Egyptians who could read this text. The list in the later chapter is even more complete. Besides noting that pederasty, murder, and profanation of religious objects was forbidden, so too was valorized and rewarded the generous treatment of servants and all the behaviors valuable to the Egyptian state. Since the scrolls were richly illustrated, it was probably read out to those who could not read, with effective use of the accompanying pictures.

Of the many depictions of this interesting