Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The Book of the Dead of the gold worker of Amun Sobekmosa came into the collection in
1937. In 1967, a team of people who worked with papyrus came to Brooklyn from Paris.
Once it was unrolled, because it's so long -- it's over 24-feet long -- just for purposes
of storing it under glass, it became necessary to cut it up into smaller pieces.
Today, we are horrified at the thought of cutting up an object like this, which had
remained intact for 3,000 years. But really, just for practical reasons, they had to cut
it.
The idea of reassembling the Book of the Dead has been kicking around the Egyptian department
for about 20 years. It's something that we've wanted to do for a very long time, because
it's such a monumental object. It's in such wonderful condition.
It's very, very exciting that we've finally reached the point where our conservators are
able to work on it and to finally present it to the public.