The Papyrus of Ani was painted in Egypt, circa 1250 bc. It represents the best preserved, longest, most ornate, and beautifully executed example of The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Compiled from the oldest religious texts on earth, these spells were originally engraved on the walls of the tombs of the pharaohs. Ani’s personal papyrus measures 78 feet long by 15 inches high.

Sir E. A. Wallis Budge acquired the Papyrus in 1888 and cut it into 37 nearly equal lengths, glued to wooden boards for ease of handling. In 1890, the British Museum produced a limited edition color lithograph facsimile. The translation, completed in 1895, revealed that many of the cuts were made in the wrong places, chapters interrupted, vignettes split, and hieroglyphic text separated from its accompanying image.

Book designer and author James Wasserman acquired a copy of the 1890 facsimile. Using state-of-the-art production techniques, the facsimile was photographed, scanned, reassembled, and then electronically recut to best display the Papyrus of Ani in book form. He also assembled a team of Egyptologists, led by Dr. Ogden Goelet of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at New York University, who wrote an overall commentary and a plate by plate description of the Papyrus.

The translation of the text of each image is placed directly below it, allowing the reader, for the first time in 3500 years, to gaze at the vignettes while reading the text. Uncluttered by footnotes or extraneous matter, the restoration of the unity of word and image has brought to life one of the most important spiritual treasures of mankind.

Egypt’s temples, statues, frescoes, carvings, jewelry, painted scrolls and sarcophagi stand as mute witnesses to a brilliant and lofty spiritual culture that has never been equaled on earth. The silent and stationary images of The Egyptian Book of the Dead continue to speak and move today, some four millennia after their creation.