Egyptian book back from the dead

DAVID KEYS

Archaeology Correspondent

A unique 2,000-year-old ancient Egyptian manuscript - a so-called Book of the Dead - has surfaced on the international antiquities market, after having disappeared from view for the past 70 years.

The "book" - a 23ft-long papyrus scroll - was removed from an unknown tomb in southern Egypt late last century and bought by a prominent Victorian amateur Egyptologist, the Rev William MacGregor. For at least two decades it remained in Mr MacGregor's private museum in Tamworth, Staffordshire, until, he sold it at auction in London in 1922 to the American millionaire William Randolph Hearst.

Hearst then kept it in one of his many mansions - or possibly in storage in New York - until 1942, when financial circumstances forced him to sell it. The book subsequently became the property of the Los Angeles Philosophical Research Society which, three months ago, sold it to the New York auction house Harmer Rooke, which then decided to put it on the market through Royal Athena Galleries in New York.

Back in the first century BC, the scroll was made for the funeral of a member of a priestly family - a wealthy Egyptian woman named Ta-er-pet.

Research over the past few months by an American Egyptologist, Dr. Malcolm Mosher, has revealed that the book came from a pre-Christian cemetery near the ancient Egyptian city of Akhmim. It was probably removed illicitly by local treasure hunters in the 1880s around the time when the French archaeologist Gaston Maspero, an early director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, was excavating the site.

The first Books of the Dead were produced in about 1450BC and production went on until around AD50.

Their function was to act as manuals for use by the dead in the afterlife. They included formulae which the dead person could use to merge his or her soul with those of the gods.

And this particular example also included a unique chart of images depicting 75 protective amulets - powerful talismans which would have protected the body and soul of the deceased. It is the only Book of the Dead to include such a chart.

Over 1,500 years, thousands of Books of the Dead were produced by the scribes of ancient Egypt. Yet today only about 100 lengthy, complete examples survive.

Ta-er-pet's scroll - now cut into nine framed lengths - is one of only a dozen of complete examples from the end of production of the books.

However both the people who produced the scroll and Ta-er-pet's family appear to have had virtually no idea as to how the text actually read.

It had obviously been copied from a much earlier example and the scribe had made a lot of mistakes. Indeed parts of the text are completely garbled.

The Ta-er-pet Book of the Dead revealed a sort of religious revivalist conservatism - almost a religious antiquarianism - in which wealthy first century BC Egyptians, around the time of Cleopatra, tried desperately and somewhat pathetically to hark back to more ancient times, as their real world became increasingly Hellenised and Romanised.

Now, the New York-based antiquities gallery, Royal Athena, and their London associates, Seaby Antiquities, hope to sell the book for US$600,000 (pounds 375,000). Both the Louvre and the Boston Museum of Fine Art are said to have shown interest, as has at least one top private collector in Europe.

n Ta-er-Pet's Book of the Dead can be seen at Seaby Galleries, 14 Old Bond Street, London, weekdays 10am-5pm until 31 October. Free.