Book of the Dead of Baki, the royal scribe
Baki’s Book of
the Dead is an extraordinary funerary papyrus that comes from the site of Deir
el-Medina, where the workmen specialized in the construction and decoration of
the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings and in the Valley of the Queens lived.
Within this community, Baki, the owner of the papyrus, had a leading role as royal
scribe and was in charge of the local administration but, above all, it was up
to him to direct the construction of the king's tomb.
The copy can be dated to the New Kingdom, more concrete to the reign of Seti I (1290-1279 BC). It comes from the familiar tomb (TT 298), situated in the southern part of Deir el-Medina necropolis. Unfortunately, the tomb had already been looted in antiquity, and only a few objects remain of the funerary equipment that accompanied the burial. Conserved at the Museo Egizio are: a wooden ushabti, inscribed on the front with the name of Baki and the title "Servant in the Place of Truth" (Cat. 2603), three wooden ushabti of his wife, the lady of the house Taysen (Cat. 2768-2770), a stele (CGT 50055 = Cat. 1549) and fragments of the Book of the Dead.
The papyrus arrived in Turin in 1824 in a poor state of conservation, consisting mainly of fragments. In 2014 began a complex restoration and recomposition of the manuscripts under the direction of Sara Demichelis and Elisa Fiore Marochetti of the Soprintendenza Belle Arti in Turin, in collaboration with the Museo Egizio, the Turin State Archive and the Oriental Archeology Institute in Cairo, where some additional fragments are stored. The operation led to the reconstruction of more than half of the original papyrus with the following sequence:
///18V–2–180V///15BIII-130AV///125A///125BV///100V///102V///149///71V///69///130B
V-141/142V/// 190–133V–135V///136A–134V///101V///99B–82V–77V–85V-124–84V-83///78–116V–115–111–112-113V///109V-22V-23V-27///42V///153A///110V–178–146V–147V–V180–50–V148–V185(+180)
–V15
New Kingdom (1539-1077 BC)
Dynasty 19 (1292-1191 BC)
Sethos I (Menmaatre)
Deir el-Medina
Acquisition: Drovetti, Bernardino
Acquisition Date: 1824
Enrica Ciccone (EC)
cursive hieroglyphs
Book of the Dead, Funerary text
Bark-of-Re, ba-soul, cow, gate/passageway, glorification, judgement, spell 002, spell 018, spell 022, spell 023, spell 027, spell 042, spell 050, spell 069, spell 071, spell 077, spell 078, spell 082, spell 083, spell 084, spell 085, spell 099, spell 100, spell 101, spell 102, spell 109, spell 110, spell 111, spell 112, spell 113, spell 115, spell 116, spell 124, spell 125, spell 133, spell 134, spell 135, spell 136, spell 141, spell 142, spell 146, spell 147, spell 148, spell 149, spell 153, spell 178, spell 180, spell 185, sun-boat
Buto (wAD.t), Sais (zAw), an island in the hereafter (qnqn.t), Hierakonpolis (nxn), Peseg-ra (psg-rA), Pedj-hw (pD-Hw), Heliopolis (iwnw), Deir el-Medina (s.t mAa.t), Iaru (iArw), Abydos (AbDw), Hermopolis (wnw), Igeret (igr.t), Busiris (Dd.w)
New Kingdom (1539-1077 BC)
Dynasty 19 (1292-1191 BC)
Sethos I (Menmaatre)
Yes
In addition to the representations of Baki and his wife, Taysen, the iconographic repertory used by the draughtsman of pBaki is the same as the one documented in the tombs of Deir el-Medina at the beginning of the XIX dynasty, especially in the tomb of Queen Nefertari, wife Ramesses II.
Demichelis, Il Libro Dei Morti Di Baki ( P. Torino Cat. 1827/1+Cat. 1811+P.IFAO 289-290) (2021) (not yet in OEB, see here).
