Before coming to the British Museum, when I read the introductions and related reviews and guides, although I had seen more than once the words similar to the Egyptian Pavilion being the most worthwhile exhibition in the British Museum, I was already prepared. But it wasn't until I walked into the Egyptian Pavilion that I realized that the Egyptian Pavilion was much more exciting than I had imagined.

The crazy British have put several sphinxes and an entire temple in the Egyptian pavilion of their British Museum!

Walk under a high dome flanked by various Egyptian artifacts, sphinxes, mummies, temples, steles...... All kinds of Egyptian-style artifacts look random in the British-style pavilion, but they are secretly in order.

Look at the past and listen to the explanation of the explainer in your hand. I soon came to the first major event of the Egyptian Pavilion, Arni's Book of the Dead.

Arni's Book of the Dead is the treasure of the British Museum in London, saying that it is a book, and it takes a name like the Book of the Dead that looks mythical and bluffing, but it is actually a painting drawn on papyrus 3,200 years ago.

Arni is the protagonist of the painting, a real character from the era of the Nineteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom. The painting was placed in Yani's tomb as a funerary object. Collector Frisbans discovered it in 1887 in a burial chamber on the west bank of the Middle Nile and was brought to England. Among the many books of the dead recorded on papyrus, Arni's Book of the Dead is the best preserved and most excellent, and can be called the ultimate work of ancient Egyptian art.

Arni's Book of the Dead is twenty-four meters long and devotes sixty chapters to the incantations and covenants that the deceased need to attain eternal life in the afterlife.

The name "Book of the Dead" is related to the content of the paintings, the so-called Book of the Dead, which records the various trials that the deceased must go through in order to obtain eternal life, the judgments, the incantations required, and the final picture scroll to obtain eternal life, usually drawn on straw paper.

In the Book of the Dead, the basic process of the deceased is roughly as follows: leaving the ** "card" into "ba", under the leadership of Anubis, through the trials of hell and darkness, to the gods and the inquisitor, to the gate of the underworld, to the "god of the underworld" Osiris, to perform the "weighing ceremony", and then take the sun boat, sail to the road of resurrection, and live the same good life in the next life as in this life.

As for Ka and Ba, two things that have never been heard of, they are related to the ancient Egyptians' understanding of the soul. The ancient Egyptians believed that there were four forms of the human soul. The first is the card. Card accompanies a person's life, people are born, cards begin to follow human beings, people die, cards leave, cards are the appearance of the soul, characteristics, virtues, it controls people's face, demeanor, conversation, character, interests. For example, why do I love one type of person and not another? In the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, this was determined by the card, which was the puppet body of a person, the same appearance and the same sex with the person, when the person ate, the card also ate, and when the person was in love, the card was in love.

The ancient Egyptians believed that after death, the card turned into a ba, and that ba had the ability to ascend upwards. In the Egyptian murals, Ba is presented as a human head and a bird, showing his ability to ascend. After death, the soul will soar, and the Egyptians longed to go to heaven after death, so the mausoleum was made into a pyramid pointing to the sky, which is an architectural form that best reflects Ba's desire and goal.

Well, moving on to the Book of the Dead. The Book of the Dead is usually in the form of a long scroll, divided into dozens or even more paragraphs, depending on the amount of wealth. And Arni's Book of the Dead is undoubtedly the most famous that has survived to this day. And the most famous fragment of Yanni's Book of the Dead is the Weighing Ceremony.

Through the glass of the window, you can clearly see this fragment. The deceased, Arni, dressed in white linen, came with his wife to Osiris for a trial. There was a balance in front of Osiris, and at the ends of the scale, on one side was the heart of Arni, and on the other was the feather representing justice and justice. Anubis was adjusting the scales to check for balance. Based on the results of the scale, Osiris decided whether the deceased could be resurrected.

If the balance is balanced, it means that the deceased was kind and fair during his lifetime, did not cut off the Nile River, did not steal other people's property, and so on. The deceased can gain the trust of Osiris, take the Sun Ship, sail to the path of resurrection, and live the same good life in the afterlife as in this life.

If one end of the heart is heavy and cannot be balanced, it means that the deceased was greedy and evil, and his heart will be taken out and thrown to the monster with the mouth of a crocodile, the upper body of a lion, and the lower body of a hippopotamus waiting to be eaten. The dead will also not be able to be resurrected.

The process of weighing the heart is recorded by the clerk on the side, that is, the god of wisdom, holding an ink pen and a clay tablet.

Generally speaking, because of the deceased's power, wealth, and so on. The scales on the Book of the Dead that have now been excavated are balanced, and Arni's Book of the Dead is no exception. In Arni's Book of the Dead, the two ends of the scales beside Anubis are on the same level.

It seemed to me that this was probably the only pleasure I could have as a layman reading Arni's Book of the Dead, and I turned off the interpreter and pointed to this passage from Arni's Book of the Dead and smiled at Flower, "People who co-authored it more than 3,000 years ago knew about fraud. ”

Flower gave me a helpless look, "Can't your focus be normal?" For example, the historical value of the artifact itself or the story behind it. ”

I was stunned, "What else can there be behind the story, isn't the explainer all finished?" Could it be that you can still stare at him and see a flower? ”

Flower puffed up proudly, "Through this Arni's Book of the Dead, I can see the great empire on which the sun never sets, the invincible British Empire hundreds of years ago. ”

I helplessly held my forehead, but I suddenly forgot that this old man was still an authentic Englishman. In some ways, the purpose of the British coming to the British Museum is really different from that of a visitor like me.

Tourists like me come to the British Museum purely to see the artefacts, to understand the history at best, to put it bluntly, to see it for a long time. And many Britons, especially Londoners, come here to see the invincible empire behind these relics that once stood on top of the world, claiming that the sun would shine on its territory at any time.

It is as if many Chinese people have a special affection for the Tang Dynasty, because at that time, the Tang Dynasty was the strongest in terms of economy, military and diplomacy. Many Britons today also have a special plot for Victorian Britain.