Becoming Osiris: The Ancient Egyptian Death Experience

ANCIENT EGYPT In the Book of the Dead the ancient Egyptians left humanity one of the most comprehensive views of the death experience and the afterlife. Without sacrificing any of the rich complexity of pharaonic thought, Becoming Osiris provides a detailed examination of this major religious text, making it easily accessible to the modern reader. This is a thought provoking account of the numerous initiatory stages of the immortalization process and the magical self-defense techniques necessary for the soul to achieve its ultimate objective of becoming a luminous being. But the true significance of the ancient Egyptian view of death cannot be entirely comprehended without knowledge of the practices that preceded those described in the Book of the Dead. Becoming Osiris gives an incisive account of both The Ritual of Embalming, which transforms the dead individual into a latent Osiris, and The Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, which restores to the dead person his faculties. Though thousands of years old these texts have an astounding contemporary relevance. Filled with illustrations from the rich field of Egyptian funerary art, Becoming Osiris is a fascinating look at the Osirian odyssey that was the ancient Egyptian death experience. STePHANE ROSSINI is a professional illustrator and the author of Reading and Writing Hieroglyphs. RUTH SCHUMANN-ANTELME is an Egyptologist, an emeritus researcher of the CNRS in France, and a professor at the School of the Louvre.