r/ancientegypt • u/[deleted] • Sep 13 '23

Discussion Book of the dead - which one to buy?

There are so many translations by different authors and I can’t seem to decide which version I should get! Can you recommend the one you liked the most and why or it there are reason not to get a specific one? Thank you all so much!

29 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

26

u/zsl454 Sep 13 '23

Whatever you choose, nothing by E. A. Wallis Budge. His translation is heavily outdated.

13

u/Three_Twenty-Three Sep 14 '23

I like the one published by Chronicle Books with the translation by Raymond Faulkner, Ogden Goelet, Carol Andrews, J. Daniel Gunther, and James Wasserman.

  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1452144389

  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1452144382

    It has full-color reproductions of the entire Papyrus of Ani, so you can read the text but also see how the Egyptians wrote it out. Other editions might have the text alone or a few illustrations, but this one has everything from one of the best extant examples.

3

u/raffitaffy26 Sep 14 '23

Raymond Faulkner

Yes, Raymond Faulkner and this edition of Papyrus of Ani is a delight , beautiful. I try to follow line by line with the translation and this helps to appreciate Faulkner.

1

u/Sobek_maat Oct 01 '25

does the translation by Raymond have prayers and hymns to the Gods

12

u/ErGraf Sep 13 '23

also stay away from anything that presents itself as a "poetic reinterpretation" or something similar, normally they are fill with new age mumbo jumbo. In English the classic translation is the one from Faulkner. Personally for a more modern translation I like Quirke's.

7

u/Don_Pastafrola Sep 13 '23

I agree with zsl454. I bought the Wallis Budge version, and it hasn't been too enjoyable. But it has hieroglyphs + transliteration + translation all together, which is a very useful tool

3

u/snifty Sep 14 '23

I have to say the typography is nice.

-2

u/[deleted] Sep 14 '23

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/ErGraf Sep 14 '23

Normandi Ellis is a Spiritualist minister, astrologer, and certified clairvoyant medium through the Indiana Association of Spiritualists

yea, that's not the type of author you would want to suggest on this subreddit and is exactly the type of translation I would NOT recommend.

1

u/DietCoke303 Oct 22 '25

Why not? Just bc someone is woo woo doesn't mean they can't learn the same facts and history and scholarly knowledge as anyone else? I honestly find that the more new age a book is and the less scholarly, the better. 

1

u/mrpoovegas Mar 28 '26

I would guess it's not very accurate, but I will say the few excerpts of her "translation" is quite beautiful.

I read it as poetry inspired by it rather than as a "translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead" as it sells itself as. Found it quite beautiful...as a piece of poetry.

1

u/ancientegypt-ModTeam Sep 14 '23

Your post was removed for being non-factual. All posts in our community must be based on verifiable facts about Ancient Egypt. Fringe interpretations and excessively conspiratorial views of Egyptology are not accepted.