Overview

""Human beings,"" the acclaimed Egyptologist Jan Assmann writes, ""are the animals that have to live with the knowledge of their death, and culture is the world they create so they can live with that knowledge."" In his new book, Assmann explores images of death and of death rites in ancient Egypt to provide startling new insights into the particular character of the civilization as a whole. Drawing on the unfamiliar genre of the death liturgy, he arrives at a remarkably comprehensive view of the religion of death in ancient Egypt. Assmann describes in detail nine different images of death: death as the body being torn apart, as social isolation, the notion of the court of the dead, the dead body, the mummy, the soul and ancestral spirit of the dead, death as separation and transition, as homecoming, and as secret. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt also includes a fascinating discussion of rites that reflect beliefs about death through language and ritual.

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9780801442414

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Reviews

This very important book represents the fruit of many years of reading, thinking, and writing about the Egyptian conceptions of death and the afterlife, and constitutes a comprehensive analysis of the subject. It is a complex, multilayered interpretation that reveals the great depth and breadth of Jan Assmann's knowledge. He systematically investigates the processes of and reactions to the experience of death, the reconstitution of the body/person of the deceased, and rites and texts that relate to the afterlife. -Gerald Kadish, Binghamton University

Author Information

Jan Assmann is Professor Emeritus of Egyptology at Heidelberg University. His books include The Search for God in Ancient Egypt and Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, both from Cornell. David Lorton, an Egyptologist, is the translator of many books, including Erik Hornung's books The Secret Lore of Egypt and Akhenaten and the Religion of Light, both from Cornell.

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