he Chapters of the Book of the Dead (_e.g._ XXXB and LXIV)
were written in the city of Thoth, or Khemenu, others were written in
Anu, or Heliopolis, and others in Busiris and other towns of the Delta.
Of the Book of the Dead that was in use under the fifth and sixth
dynasties we have no copies, but many Chapters of the Recension in use
under the eleventh and twelfth dynasties are found written in cursive
hieroglyphs upon wooden sarcophagi, many of which may be seen in the
British Museum. With the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty the Book of
the Dead enters a new phase of its existence, and it became the custom
to write it on rolls of papyrus, which were laid with the dead in their
coffins, instead of on the coffins themselves. As the greater number of
such rolls have been found in the tombs of priests and others at Thebes,
the Recension that was in use from the eighteenth to the twenty-first
dynasty (1600-900 B.C.) is commonly called the THEBAN RECENSION. This
Recension, in its earliest form, is usually written with black ink in
vertical columns of hieroglyphs, which are separated by black lines; the
titles of the Chapters, the opening words of each section, and the
Rubrics are written with red ink. About the middle of the eighteenth
dynasty pictures painted in bright colours, "vignettes," were added to
the Chapters; these are very valuable, because they sometimes explain or
give a clue to the meaning of parts of the texts that are obscure. Under
the twentieth and twenty-first dynasties the writing of copies of the
Book of the Dead in hieroglyphs went out of fashion, and copies written
in the hieratic, or cursive, character took their place. These were
ornamented with vignettes drawn in outline with black ink, and although
the scribes who made them wrote certain sections in hieroglyphs, it is
clear that they did not possess the skill of the great scribes who
flourished between 1600 and 1050 B.C. The last Recension of the Book of
the Dead known to us in a complete form is the SAITE RECENSION, which
came into existence about 600 B.C., and continued in use from that time
to the Roman Period. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods the priests
composed several small works such as the "Book of Breathings" and the
"Book of Traversing Eternity," which were based upon the Book of the
Dead, and were supposed to contain in a highly condensed form all the
texts that were necessary for salvation. At a still later period even
more abbre