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A HIERATIC PAPYRUS FRAGMENT WITH COLOURED VIGNETTES FROM CHAPTER 17 OF THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

LATE PERIOD, CIRCA 600-300 B.C.

Details

A HIERATIC PAPYRUS FRAGMENT WITH COLOURED VIGNETTES FROM CHAPTER 17 OF THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
LATE PERIOD, CIRCA 600-300 B.C.
The upper part depicting a series of vignettes showing the deceased, wearing a long white kilt, with bird wearing a djed-amulet collar standing behind, raising his hands in adoration before a sacred wia-barque, with addorsed guardian seated lions and the lower part of a benu-bird (phoenix), with 20 lines or partial lines from spell number 17, in glass frame
20¼ x 14 in. (51.5 x 35.5 cm.)

Provenance

Presented by Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) to a member of the family, whence by descent to the present owner. The family home was Le Bois Muralt, Switzerland, the contents of which were sold at Christie's, London, 18-19 January 2000.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.

Lot Essay

Chapter 17, with its vignette of the lions of the horizon over whose backs the sun rises daily, and the phoenix, an incarnation of the sun-god Ra, relates to the doctrine of Ra, as well as being a spell on behalf of the deceased that he might pass safely through the trials of the next world ''so that no evil shall touch him''.

It was Jean François Champollion le Jeune's (1790-1832) work on Egyptian hieratic and hieroglyphs from the Books of the Dead that enabled him to transliterate a demotic text sign by sign into hieratic and to transpose it subsequently into hieroglyphic, so leading to the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone.

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