Repurposing Ritual

Repurposing Ritual is the editio princeps of a group of papyrus fragments from ancient Asyut in Middle Egypt currently kept in the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin. The papyri are significant for the study of ancient Egyptian religious and funerary culture because they contain in a neat hieratic handwriting magical spells which otherwise mainly appear on wooden box-shape coffins from the First Intermediate Period onwards (ca. 2205 BC). The so-called Coffin Texts originated in another context, however, and only received a funerary association when written down on coffins or other funerary equipment. At least some of the texts are secondary copies of ritual spells. The ‘Berlin papyri’ yield these spells in combination with an offering list and a Letter to the Dead dedicated to a male person called Sedekh who lived in Asyut around 2100BC. This unique combination of text genres gives valuable insights into the performative stages of a personalized mortuary ritual. It also shows how the Egyptians’ investment in preparations for the afterlife contained a wealth of information about the world of the living.