What is “The Book of Breathings”? Hugh Nibley, BYU Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, (Winter, 1971) pp.153-187 Edited by Kerry A. Shirts Upon their publication in 1967, the Joseph Smith Papyri Nos. X and XI were quickly and easily identified as pages from the Egyptian “Book of Breathings.” The frequent occurrence of the word snsn provided a conspicuous clue, and, though the last page of the book (the one that usually contains the title) was missing, its contents closely matched that of other Egyptian writings bearing the title sh’ (sh’i, sh’.t) n snsn, commonly translated “Book of Breathing(s).” A most welcome guide to the student was ready at hand in J. de Horrack’s text, translation, and commentary on a longer and fuller version of the same work (Pap. Louvre 3284) which he published in 1878 along with another version of the text (Louvre No. 3291) and variant readings from a half dozen other Paris manuscripts. [J. de Horrack, Le livre des respirations, Bibliothèque Égyptologique 17 (1878), pp. 110-137, Plates vii-xiii.] Thanks to de Horrack, the experts found their work already done for them, and they showed their gratitude by consisently following the readings of the de Horrack’s text and translation instead of the Joseph Smith text whenever the latter proved recalcitrant. A Berlin manuscript of the Book of Breathings was published with a Latin translation, by H. Brugsch as early as 1851, [A recent summary of the literature may be found in G. Botti, Il Libro del Respirare, etc, in Jnl. of Egypt. Archæology (JEA), 54 (1968), pp. 223-230; cf. Budge and Chassinat, below, notes 3 & 6.] and within a decade of de Horrack’s work E.A.W. Budge came out with a magnificent facsimile in color of the “Kerasher” Book of Breathings of the British Museum (No. 9995), accompanied by a transliteration into hieroglyphics and a translation. [In E. A.W. Budge, Facsimile of the Papyri of Hunefer, Anhai, Kerasher and Net-Chemet, (Br. Mus., 1899), pp. 33-43, and plates.] In 1935 and 1936 Georg Moeller published facsimiles of a Berlin “Buch von Atem” (Pap. 3135) as reading exercises for students, [G. Moeller, Hieratische Lesestücke (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1935), p. 32, and Hieratische Paläographie, 3 (Leipzig, 1936), Taf. XI.] and recently J.C. Goyon has brought together more exemplars. [J.-C. Goyon, Le Papyrus du Louvre No. 3279 (Cairo, 1966, in Bibliotheque dEtude, No. 42).] Along with our “Book of Breathings,” another writing bearing the same name but sometimes designated by the Egyptians themselves as “The Second Book of Breathings,” once gave rise to some confusion. It was published in 1895 by J. Lieblein under the mistaken title of Que mon nom fleurisse; [Discussed by E. Chassinat, Le Livre second des Respirations, in Revue de lHistoire des Religions, 1895, pp. 312-314, who provides a translation of one of the texts, pp. 317ff; G. Botti, Il Libro del Respirare, pp. 226-8, has given a transliteration and translation of another.] at the time over one hundred copies of the work were available, and the most striking thing about it was the liberty displayed by the scribes. “The things reported,” wrote Chassinat, “the conceptions presented are identical in all of them [the Mss], but the form in which they are expressed varies almost to infinity according to the caprice or personal beliefs of the scribe and the resources of the buyer. . . ” The writers of the first Book of Breathings do not take such liberties, and yet the two writings are so closely associated that the ancient scribes “often made no distinction between the two books,” giving both the same title, and G. Botti treats them as subdivisions of the same work. [Botti, p. 224. After the Amarna Period appeared a spate of freely composed funerary texts, all using familiar materials, but in new forms and combinations. These are designated by A. Piankoff as The Mythological Papyri, S. Schott, Zum Weltbild der Jenseitsführer des neuen Reiches, Goettinger Nachrichten, 1965, No. 11, p. 168. In the 26th Dynasty the Egyptians recherchaient avec passion and reproduced accurately texts going back to the earliest times, P. Barguet, Le Livre des Morts des anciens Egyptiens (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1967), p. 13. Hence though the texts conform to the Zeitgeist through the centuries, der Grundtenor bleibt stets der gleiche, G. Thausing, Das grosse ägyptische Totenbuch (Papyrus Reinisch), etc. (Cairo, 1969, in Schriften des osterreichischen Kulturinstituts Kairo, Arch.-hist. Abt., Bd. 1), p. 3.] Just as these writings seem to blend into each other, so they fuse with still other works; like other Egyptian funerary writings, they everywhere betray their dependence on earlier texts as well as their contributions to later ones–Botti suggests that the two Rhind Papyri “are substantially derived from” the Breathing texts. The effect is that of a spectral band of writings that blend imperceptibly into each other and so form an unbroken continuum that in the end embraces the entire funerary literature. Of course, some texts are more closely related than others, but if we attempt to run down everything in the Book of Breathings to its source, or to establish a priority or order of derivation we soon find ourselves going through all the funerary texts and finding them all quite relevant to our subject. For the Book of Breathings is before all else, as Bonnet observes, a composite, made up of “compilations and excerpts from older funerary sources and mortuary formulas.” [H. Bonnet, Reallexikon der ägyptischen Religionsgeschichte (Berlin, 1952), p. 59.] From the Second Book of Breathings, hardly distinguishable from it, it blends off into such earlier writings as “The Book of Passing through the Eternities,” the “Amduat,” and the “Book of Gates,” in which we recognize most of the ideas and even phrases of the “Sensen” Papyrus. [W. Wreszinski, Das Buch von Durchwandern der Ewigkeit, Aegyptische Zeitschrift (AZ) 45 (1908), pp. 111ff; Chassinat, Le Livre second des Respirations, p. 315.] Maspero’s observation that “The Book of Breathings was a composition of the later period analogous to. . . the Book of Passing through Eternity, the Book of Transformations, and other writings which one finds on Greco-Roman mummies following the example or taking the place of the Book of the Dead,” [G. Maspero, Le Livre des Respirations, in Bibliotheque Egyptologique 2 (1893), p. 477; E. Hornung, Einführung in die Aegyptologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967), p. 71.] now finds support in E. Hornung’s declaration that “The Book of the Dead was in Roman times supplanted by the shorter Books of Breathing.” [Hornung, p. 71. The neglected Demotic family of Breathing texts is also very close to the other texts of the Book of the Dead, Botti, p. 223.] Since it would seem to be “just more of the same,” one is surprised to hear Botti’s ringing declaration that “the Book of Breathing is without doubt the most important exponent of the funerary literature which flourished especially at Thebes about the first and second centuries after Christ, or, according to Moeller, at the beginning of the first century before Christ.” [Botti, p. 223.] What makes it so important? Two things, principally, its timing and its packaging. The Book of Breathing is the great time-binder; it comes towards the end of Egyptian civilization and so wraps everything up, right back to the beginning. The same continuum that passes from one type of text to another without a break also passes from one age to another from the earliest to the latest times.”. . . the ideas and beliefs expressed in it are not new,” Budge pointed out, “indeed, every one of them may be found repeated in several places in the religious works of the ancient EgyptiansAll the gods mentioned. . . are found in the oldest texts.” [Budge, Facsimiles of the Papyri . .., p. 33; Chassinat, Le Livre des Respirations, p. 315: . . . this book existed, at least in one of its fundamental parts [i.e., that found in the Pyramid Texts], for long centuries before its complete diffusion.” These texts are essentially static, betraying no sense of chronology and no interest in the past, H. Brunner, “Zum Verständnis der archaisierenden Tendenzen in der ägyptischen Spätzeit,” Saeculum, 21 (1970), pp. 151-5. In the 26. Dyn. princes even made plaster casts of ancient inscriptions to use in their own tombs, ibid., p. 154.] From Thebes, where most of the manuscripts (including the Joseph Smith Papyri) were found, it can be traced back through Memphis (Botti’s Turin Pap. Demot. N. 766 is Memphite) to Heliopolis and the beginnings of Egyptian civilization–and indeed the Joseph Smith Papyri, though Theban, refers constantly to Heliopolis. It contains material from every period: “. . . elements taken from the Pyramid Texts, the Book of the Dead, along with phrases and concepts already met with on the steles and sarcophagi of the Middle and New Kingdoms.” [Botti, p. 223.] The lateness of the “Breathing” documents, instead of detracting from their value actually enhances it. For it not only gives them a chance to embrace the entire funerary literature of the past, but places them in that crucial moment of transition in which they are able to transmit much ancient Egyptian lore to early Jewish and Christian circles. The first scholars to study it were impressed by its high moral tone and strong resemblance to the Bible, noting that it “bears the imprint of an essentially religious feeling, and contains moral maxims whose striking agreement with the precepts of the Jewish Lawgiver as with those of the Christ has already been pointed out by Egyptologists.” [De Horrack, p. 134.] And while its picture of the here-after differs fundamentally from that of present day Christianity and Judaism, it is strikingly like that of the ancient Jewish and Christian sectaries as newly-discovered documents are revealing them: “The next world is represented after the pattern of this one,” wrote de Horrack, “the life of the spirit is so to speak just another step in human existence, the activities of the elect being analogous to those of men on earth. It is not an existence dedicated to eternal contemplation, a passive state of bliss, but an active and work-filled life, yet one, to make use of M. Chabas’s expression, endowed with infinitely vaster scope than this one.”16 Many recent studies confirm this judgment, showing not only that much authentic Egyptian matter was carried over into Judaism and Christianity, but that such Egyptian stuff instead of being the spoiled and rancid product of a late and degenerate age, represented the best and oldest the Egyptians had to offer. [L. Kakosy, Probleme der ägyptischen Jenseitsvorstellungen in der Ptolemäerund Kaiserzeit, in Religions en Egypte Hellenistique et Romaine (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1969), pp. 59-68. Many others are referred to in our Commentary.] L. Kakosy, for example, bids us compare the classic Egyptian descriptions of heaven and hell with those found in an Egyptian Christian grave of the 8th or 9th century A.D., specifically in the Apocalypses of Enoch and Peter, to see for ourselves how little they have changed. [Ibid., p. 68; also in Oriens Antiquus, 3 (1964), p. 19, where he notes how the 18th-dynasty Book of Amduat carries over into the Coptic Christian Pistis Sophia. M. Philonenko, in Religions en Eg. Hellenist. et Romans, pp. 109110, finds an Egyptian and Iranian background for the Jewish Secrets of Enoch.] Egyptologists can no longer brush such resemblances aside as coincidences, and nowhere are they more striking and more frequent than in the “Breathing” texts and their closest relatives. [E. A.W. Budge, Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London, 1913), pp. lxiff, lists twenty Coptic Christian borrowings from ancient Egyptian imagery; cf. O.H.E. Burmester, Egyptian Mythology in the Coptic Apocrypha, Orientalia, 7 (1938), pp. 355-367; E. Hornung, Altagyptische Hollenvorstellungen (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1968), p. 8, notes resemblances between the Coptic Christian texts and a number of Egyptian writings (Coffin Texts, Amduat, Book of Gates, Book of Quererts), which are all strongly reflected in the Book of Breathings. P. Barguet, Livre des Morts, p. 19, observes that Chap. 85 of the Book of the Dead (one of the sections included in the Joseph Smith Papyri) finds earlier expression in Coffin Text No. 307, which contains letter for letter almost the first sentence of the Gospel according to St. John; and J. G. Griffith, in Religion en Egypte, etc. (above n. 17), p. 51, does not hesitate to compare allegorical expressions in the very ancient Ramesseum Papyrus with the Christian equating of bread with flesh and baptism with resurrection. S. Schott, Die Deutung der Geheimnisse des Rituals für die Abwehr des Bosen (Wiesbaden: Ff. Steiner, 1954), p. 6, notes parallels in this Egyptian text (which is closely related to the Book of Breathings) and the Christian sacraments.] Of particular interest to us is the close association of the Book of Breathing with the Facsimiles of the Book of Abraham. It can be easily shown by matching up the fibres of the papyri that the text of Joseph Smith Pap. No. XI was written on the same strip of material as Facsimile Number 1, the writing beginning immediately to the left of the “lion-couch” scene. The British Museum Book of Breathing, “the Kerasher Papyrus,” has both the “lion-couch” scene (Budge, Vignette No. 2b), and a scene resembling our Facsimile Number 3, though representing a patently different situation albeit with the same props and characters (Vignette No. 1). This last stands at the head of the “Kerasher” text, and suggests that our Fac. No. 3 was originally attached at the other end of the Joseph Smith Papyrus, coming after the last column, which is missing. But what about Facsimile Number 2, the well-known round hypocephalus? From special instructions written on other Books of Breathing it would appear that the written texts themselves, properly folded, could and did serve as hypocephali. Some copies are to placed “on the left hand near the heart” (the Joseph Smith Papyrus is one of these), or else if one chooses “under the head” of the deceased. [So Pap. Florence 3662, H. Bonnet, Reallexikon, p. 59. Sometimes the instructions recommend having the Book of Breathings under the feet, e.g. Louvre No. 3157, in Chassinat, Livre des Respirations, p. 317.] A Book of Breathings studied by Champollion, made for the child Soter, bore the inscription in Greek: hypo ten kephalen, “under the head,” from which Champollion derived the word “hypocaphalus” by which such round head-cushions as our Facsimile No. 2 are now designated. [Chassinat, p. 317, n. 1.] As the concluding act of the Egyptian burial ceremony, a priest would read the Book of Breathings standing by the coffin, and then, just as the lid came down, he would deposit the book under the head of the dead person, exactly as if it were a hypocephalus. [S. Schott, Nut spricht als Mutter und Sarg, Revue dEgyptologie 17 (1965), p. 86. The text states that it is meant to produce a flame under the head of the Ba of the deceased, ibid., p. 83, that being the well-known purpose of the hypocephali.] Thus our “Sensen” Papyrus is closely bound to all three facsimiles by physical contact, putting us under moral obligation to search out possible relationships between the content of the four documents.
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