BBC 100件藏品中的世界史001:Mummy of Hornedjitef木乃伊霍尼杰提

001:Mummy of Hornedjitef木乃伊霍尼杰提

Abstract 內(nèi)容摘要:

Mummy of Hornedjitef (third century BC). A wooden coffin from Thebes, Egypt

木乃伊霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)(公元前3世紀(jì))，木制棺槨，發(fā)現(xiàn)于古埃及底比斯城(Thebes)

MP3 文本：

The sound of the past is in fact the sound of a ghost, it's a haunting magnetic pulse -which is all that's left of a mighty star that we can still hear today, thanks to the Centre for Astrophysics at Jodrell Bank.

遠(yuǎn)古的聲音實(shí)際上是幽靈的聲音，那是揮之不去的磁脈沖波——一個(gè)巨大的恒星僅存的殘余。感謝坐落于周德?tīng)柕?Jodrell Bank)的天體物理學(xué)研究中心，我們今天依然能夠聽(tīng)到這個(gè)磁波。

The explosion that killed this star was so intense, that it was seen in broad daylight across Europe, North America and China in the summer of the year 1054; at least that's what the year was called in Europe. So what was our world up to, when men and women, however they counted the years, were gazing up to the heavens at this dying star, which they could see and we can still hear?

時(shí)值1054年的夏天，至少歐洲紀(jì)年法如是說(shuō)，導(dǎo)致這顆恒星隕落的爆炸如此劇烈，以至于橫跨歐洲、北美以及中國(guó)的居民在光天化日下見(jiàn)證了這一幕。這顆恒星他們看得到，我們聽(tīng)得到，那么，忽略各種紀(jì)年方式，當(dāng)那些古人仰視蒼穹中這顆即將隕落的恒星時(shí)，我們的世界何去何從?

What were they doing, making, thinking? Well, a thousand years ago in America, pyramids are taking shape on the Mississippi river; the world's first bank notes are circulating in China; a magnificent Baghdad is the largest city in the world; in West Africa, Ghana rules a vast empire and, on a chilly island in northern Europe, there's a nasty surprise on the horizon for a king called Harold.

他們?cè)趶氖率裁?，制作什么，思考什?1000年前，美洲密西西比河上金字塔日將成形，在中國(guó)世界上首批紙幣開(kāi)始流通，雄偉的巴格達(dá)城在世界上首屈一指，西非的加納統(tǒng)治著泱泱帝國(guó)，歐洲一個(gè)冰冷的小島上正醞釀著一次針對(duì)哈羅德(Harold)國(guó)王的卑鄙奇襲。

In these programmes, I'm travelling back in time and across the globe, to see how we humans, over two million years, have shaped our world, and been shaped by it. And I'm going to tell this story exclusively through the 'things' that humans have made ... all sorts of 'things', carefully designed and then either admired and preserved or used, broken and thrown away.

在這一系列節(jié)目中，我將追溯時(shí)光，縱橫全球，探索200多萬(wàn)年來(lái)我們?nèi)祟惾绾嗡茉焓澜绮槭澜缢茉臁Ｎ覍H僅通過(guò)各種各樣精心打造的“人造物”——或?yàn)槿司囱?、保存，或?yàn)槿耸褂?、損壞、丟棄，來(lái)講述這個(gè)故事。

I've chosen just a hundred objects from different points on our journey -from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card, and in each programme I'm going to be talking about one object from the British Museum's collection.

在這次時(shí)空之旅中，我從不同的點(diǎn)上選取了正好100件物品——從一個(gè)烹飪罐到一艘金帆船，或從一個(gè)石器時(shí)代的工具到一張現(xiàn)代的信用卡。每期節(jié)目中，我將談?wù)摯笥⒉┪镳^館藏中的一件展品。

'When I see it, I immediately think of the mastery of technology and art, the welding of the two ...' 'I just thought it was beautiful to look at, that it made me feel that it was used, and used again and again ...' 'It's a beautiful object, and it's fascinating, of course, because it's probably quite accurate ...' 'Holding this I can feel what it was like to be out on the African savannahs ...'

“看見(jiàn)它，我便想到精湛的技術(shù)和圓熟的藝術(shù)，以及二者的緊密結(jié)合……”“我就是覺(jué)得它看上去很美，讓我聯(lián)想到它曾被人們反反復(fù)復(fù)使用……”“這件展品很精美，也很迷人，當(dāng)然啦，因?yàn)樗赡芟喈?dāng)精確……”“握著它時(shí)，我仿佛感受到了非洲大草原上的野外生活……”

We will get to the very beginning of human history, but I'm not going to start there because I want to begin with the mummies -which is where I began when I first came through these doors into the British Museum in 1954 at the age of eight, and I think that's where most people begin when they first visit a museum.

我們以后會(huì)回到初民時(shí)期，但是我的故事并不始于彼時(shí)，因?yàn)槲掖蛩阆戎v述木乃伊——1954年八歲的我第一次穿越大英博物館的重門，首先映入眼簾的便是那些木乃伊，它們是我探索世界史的開(kāi)端。我猜測(cè)多數(shù)訪客的博物館之行也始于此處。

It's a pretty safe bet that most of the children you can hear round about me are also headed for the Egyptian mummies. What fascinated me then was the mummies themselves, the thrilling gruesome thought of the dead bodies, but I'm now much more interested in the mummy cases - and I've chosen one particular mummy case for this opening programme, because it carries all the different kinds of messages across the millennia, signals from the past if you like, that 'things' can communicate to us, and that I'm going to be looking for in all the objects in this series.

我敢說(shuō)你現(xiàn)在聽(tīng)到的我身邊這些孩子也是沖著木乃伊去的。當(dāng)時(shí)我著迷的是那些木乃伊本身，它們激起了我對(duì)死尸既興奮又恐懼的想象，但現(xiàn)在我對(duì)這些木乃伊的案例更感興趣。我特別為首期節(jié)目選擇了這一典型的木乃伊案例，因?yàn)樗鼣y帶了“人造物”所能傳遞的穿越千載的遠(yuǎn)古音信。在這一系列節(jié)目中，我將在這些物品中探求這些音信。

Telling history through things, whether it's a mummy's coffin or a credit card, is what museums are for and, because the British Museum has collected things from all over the globe, it's not a bad place to try to tell a world history. Of course it can only be 'a' history of the world, not 'the' history.

通過(guò)如木乃伊棺材或信用卡這樣的物品講述歷史，是所有博物館的目標(biāo)和功能。大英博物館是用來(lái)復(fù)述世界簡(jiǎn)史的一個(gè)不錯(cuò)的選擇，因?yàn)樗鸭耸澜绺鞯氐奈锲?。?dāng)然，它所能講述的只是世界“簡(jiǎn)史”，而非世界“歷史”。

When people come to the museum, they choose their own objects and make their own journey round the world and through time, but I think what they will find, is that their own histories quickly intersect with everybody else's -and when that happens, you no longer have a history of a particular people or nation, but a story of endless connections. Nobody has thought more deeply about this than the Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen:

人們?cè)煸L博物館時(shí)，會(huì)依據(jù)個(gè)人喜好瀏覽展品，制定自己的時(shí)空之旅。但我想，人們會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，其本族歷史旋即與外族史縱橫交錯(cuò)，此時(shí)，歷史已經(jīng)不再局限于某個(gè)民族或國(guó)家，而是一個(gè)無(wú)限延伸、環(huán)環(huán)相扣的故事。關(guān)于這點(diǎn)，印度經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家、諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)得主阿瑪?shù)賮?森(Amartya Sen)的認(rèn)識(shí)最為深刻：

'I think what is really very important to recognise is that, when we look at the history of the world, we're not looking at the history of different civilisations truncated and separated from each other. They've a huge amount of contact with each other, there is a kind of inter-connectedness.

“我認(rèn)為認(rèn)識(shí)到這點(diǎn)非常重要，即縱觀世界歷史，我們看到的并非各大文化彼此隔絕分離的歷史。各種文化之間交流豐富，存在著某種內(nèi)在聯(lián)系。

So I've always felt, not to think of the history of the world as a history of civilisations, but as a history of world civilisations evolving in often similar, often diverse ways, always interacting with each other. And this is a very different view from the clash of civilisations to which we were exposed some years ago, as a way to understand enmity in the world. Enmity has not been the general condition of the relationship between people across the world in history.'

所以我始終認(rèn)為，不應(yīng)把世界歷史視為各種文化的簡(jiǎn)單結(jié)合體，而應(yīng)是其相互作用，遵循相似又相異的軌道不斷進(jìn)化的歷史。我的觀點(diǎn)很大程度上背離了幾年前提出的文化沖突論。文化沖突是我們理解世界敵對(duì)狀態(tài)的一種方法，但縱觀世界歷史，這種狀態(tài)并非人類關(guān)系的主流。”

Most of us I think, if we come back to a museum that we visited as a child, have the sense that we've changed enormously, while the things have remained serenely the same, but of course they haven't. Thanks to constant research and to new scientific techniques, what we can know about them is constantly growing. Let's look at one of the most impressive mummy cases in the British Museum. It was made around 240 BC for a high-ranking Egyptian priest called Hornedjitef.

回到童年時(shí)代參觀過(guò)的博物館，我們大多會(huì)感慨物是人非。事實(shí)上，隨著持續(xù)的研究和科技的進(jìn)步，那些展品也發(fā)生了變化，我們對(duì)它們的了解不斷增長(zhǎng)。讓我們來(lái)看看大英博物館木乃伊展品中最令人印象深刻的那件吧。它大約制作于公元前240年，主人是一位名為霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)的埃及高級(jí)牧師。

There's a massive black outer case in the shape of a human body, there's an elaborately decorated inner case, and then the mummy itself. Everything we know about Hornedjitef, we know from this group of things. He is his own document if you like, and it's a document that continues to give up its secrets. My colleague, John Taylor, has been researching the mummies in the British Museum for over 20 years - I asked him what we have learnt about Hornedjitef since he came to the British Museum:

它包括一個(gè)巨大的黑色人形棺套，一個(gè)精心裝飾的內(nèi)棺，以及木乃伊本身。我們對(duì)霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)的了解均來(lái)自這套物品。你可以說(shuō)霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)就是他自己的一部歷史文獻(xiàn)，不斷地泄露著自己的秘密。我的同事約翰?泰勒(John Taylor)從事博物館的木乃伊研究已逾20年，我詢問(wèn)他自霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)被移駕到博物館以來(lái)，我們了解到了哪些知識(shí)：

'When he arrived at the Museum in 1835, the hieroglyphic script had only just been deciphered, so the first step forward was to read all the inscriptions on his coffins, which told us who he was, what his job was, and something about the religious background that he knew.'

“1835年Hornedjitef來(lái)到博物館時(shí)，象形文字剛剛破譯，所以第一步就是閱讀棺槨上記錄著他身份、職位以及宗教信仰的文字。”

He was a priest in the Temple of Karnak around 250 BC. Like all Egyptians, he believed that if his body was preserved, he would live beyond death, but before reaching the afterlife, he would have to undertake a hazardous journey, for which he needed to prepare with the utmost care.

公元前250年左右，霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)是卡納克(Karnak)神廟的一位牧師。像他的同胞一樣，他相信如果尸體保存下來(lái)，他將超越死亡，但在轉(zhuǎn)世前，他必須經(jīng)歷一段危機(jī)四伏的長(zhǎng)途跋涉，因此他小心翼翼地做好了準(zhǔn)備工作。

So he took with him charms, amulets and spells for every eventuality. On the lid of his inner coffin, he even had painted a map of the heavens stretched out above him as an aid to navigation. Hornedjitef has, in fact, commissioned his own personal firmament and time-machine. This elaborate coffin will let him travel through both time and space, and all this meticulous preparation on his part has allowed us to travel in the opposite direction, back to him and to his world.

他隨身攜帶著吉祥物、護(hù)身符和咒語(yǔ)以防不測(cè)，甚至繪制了一幅蔓延在內(nèi)棺棺蓋上的天體圖作為指引。事實(shí)上，他已經(jīng)委托技師制作了自己的時(shí)空機(jī)器。他精雕細(xì)琢的棺材將引領(lǐng)他穿越時(shí)空，而他一絲不茍的準(zhǔn)備將帶領(lǐng)我們追溯時(shí)光，故地重游。

'In the last 20 years, there have been huge steps forward in ways of gathering information. So we're now looking at the condition of the bodies non-invasively, just by scanning them. We can examine the teeth in great detail, look at the wear and the dental disease that they suffered from, we can look at the bones, we can see now that Hornedjitef had arthritis in his back which must have been very painful for him.' (John Taylor)

“近20年，搜集信息的技巧突飛猛進(jìn)?，F(xiàn)在我們僅利用掃描這種平和的方式就可以觀察尸體的狀況。我們能夠非常細(xì)致地檢查牙齒的磨損情況和疾病，我們還能看到骨骼。我們發(fā)現(xiàn)霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)患有脊椎疾病，他當(dāng)時(shí)一定覺(jué)得很疼。”——約翰?泰勒(John Taylor)

But the scientific advances of the last couple of decades have allowed us to find out about a great deal more than Hornedjitef's bad back. If the words on his coffin tell us about his place in society and what that society believed about life after death, the new scientific techniques let us go one stage further - to analyse the materials with which mummies and coffins were made, and to see how Egypt was connected to the world round about it.

然而，近幾十年的科學(xué)進(jìn)展允許我們發(fā)現(xiàn)比霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)的脊椎疾病更有價(jià)值的東西。棺材上的文字告訴我們他的社會(huì)地位和當(dāng)時(shí)的社會(huì)信仰，新科技則使我們能進(jìn)一步分析制作木乃伊和棺材的原材料以及埃及和周邊世界的聯(lián)系。

'But we can also look at substances that are being used in mummification, we can test them, we can look at the chemical composition of them to find out what materials were being used - maybe now we can look at where they were coming from. We can compare these chemical make-ups with substances found in different parts of the Mediterranean, and begin to reconstruct the trading networks that supplied these things to Egypt.

“我們還可以著眼于制作木乃伊所使用的化學(xué)物質(zhì)，我們可以通過(guò)檢測(cè)化學(xué)成分確定原料種類，發(fā)現(xiàn)人們采用了哪些種原料，也許現(xiàn)在我們還可以著眼于原料產(chǎn)地。我們可以拿這些化學(xué)成分與地中海不同區(qū)域發(fā)現(xiàn)的物質(zhì)做對(duì)比，重新構(gòu)建向埃及提供這些物資的貿(mào)易網(wǎng)絡(luò)。

Some of the mummies have bitumen -the black tarry substance -on the surface and, by analysing the composition, it's possible to track it to its source - some of it we know came from the Dead Sea. So, all of this now is filling in these gaps which the texts don't really tell us about.' (John Taylor)

有些木乃伊表面含有瀝青，即一種黑色的柏油物質(zhì)，我們可以通過(guò)化學(xué)成分分析追溯到它的發(fā)源地——我們已經(jīng)知道有些來(lái)自死海地區(qū)。因此，這些填補(bǔ)了文字信息的空白。”——約翰?泰勒(John Taylor)

And of course it's not just Hornedjitef's mummy case that's telling us more and more. All the objects we'll be looking at in this series are releasing new information as scholars find new ways of examining them.

當(dāng)然，向我們泄露更多信息的不止霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)木乃伊，我們?cè)谶@個(gè)系列中探討的所有展品，都在隨著學(xué)者們檢測(cè)方法的更新，向我們揭示出新的信息。

Most of the material that Hornedjitef had with him in his coffin was designed to guide him through the great journey to the afterlife, with star-maps and spells to help him overcome all foreseeable difficulties. The one thing his star-map certainly did not predict, was that he might ultimately wind up at the British Museum; let's face it, Bloomsbury might have been a bit of a disappointment to him!

霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)攜帶在棺材中的大多數(shù)物品都是用來(lái)在漫長(zhǎng)旅程中指引他到達(dá)來(lái)世的，星圖和咒語(yǔ)將幫助他克服所有可預(yù)見(jiàn)的劫難。然而，他的星圖并未預(yù)測(cè)出的是，他也許會(huì)在大英博物館終了此生。讓我們勇敢面對(duì)這個(gè)事實(shí)吧，雖然布魯姆伯利(Bloomsbury)難免對(duì)他有些失望!

But, should he and his possessions be here anyway? Questions like this crop up frequently -where do things from the past belong now? Should everything be exhibited where it was originally made? I'll be coming back to these questions at various points in the programmes. But I asked the Egyptian writer Ahdaf Souief how she felt about seeing so many Egyptian antiquities so far from home:

但是，他和他的財(cái)產(chǎn)應(yīng)該陳列在這里嗎?這樣的問(wèn)題經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)：這些古董屬于哪里?它們是否應(yīng)陳列在發(fā)源地?在這一系列節(jié)目中，我會(huì)時(shí)常回到這些問(wèn)題。我問(wèn)埃及作家阿達(dá)芙?蘇耶夫(Ahdaf Souief)，看到大量的埃及展品“背井離鄉(xiāng)”，她感覺(jué)如何：

'Ultimately it's probably no bad thing to have Egyptian obelisks and stones and statues sprinkled all over the world. It reminds us of ages of colonialism, yes, but it also reminds the world of our common heritage.' It's that idea of a common heritage that's become more and more apparent and more important to me, the longer I spend working in the British Museum. Personally, I think it's never been more important than now to think about the history of the world as one shared story.

“從根本上說(shuō)，也許埃及方尖碑、石碑及雕塑流落于世界各地不是件壞事。這一事實(shí)雖然不斷提醒我們埃及長(zhǎng)達(dá)幾個(gè)世紀(jì)的殖民史，但也同時(shí)提醒世界這些古董是人類的共同財(cái)產(chǎn)。”在大英博物館工作的時(shí)間越長(zhǎng)，我越能感受到“人類共同財(cái)產(chǎn)”這一概念的明確性和重要性。我個(gè)人認(rèn)為，當(dāng)前最重要的就是將世界歷史看做一部全人類共同參與的歷史。

'If I could decree a universal education programme, I would make every child in the world learn a brief history of the entire world that focused on the common ground. It would examine how people perceive their relationship to each other, to the planet, and to the universe, and it would see human history as a kind of ongoing joint project, where one lot of people picked up where another had left off.' (Ahdaf Soueif)

“如果我可以開(kāi)展一場(chǎng)全民教育活動(dòng)，我將讓世界上的每個(gè)孩子學(xué)習(xí)以共同基礎(chǔ)為重點(diǎn)的世界簡(jiǎn)史，探究人類如何感知自己同他人、地球和宇宙的關(guān)系。人類的歷史將被視為一項(xiàng)聯(lián)合，互補(bǔ)，持續(xù)不斷的偉大工程。”——阿達(dá)芙?蘇耶夫(Ahdaf Soueif)

I started this programme with the sound of a star whose explosion was seen across half the world around 1066. But the story of people making things began nearly two million years ago. And once again, the radio telescope can let us tune in to the echo of another dying star that those ancestors, nearly two million years ago, would have been able to see - but at this point all our ancestors lived in Africa.

節(jié)目開(kāi)始時(shí)，我們播放了一顆恒星發(fā)出的聲音，半個(gè)地球的人于1066年左右見(jiàn)證了它的大爆炸。然而，人類造物的故事始于近200萬(wàn)年前。通過(guò)無(wú)線電天文望遠(yuǎn)鏡，我們?cè)俅温?tīng)到了另一顆即將隕落的恒星的回響，而200萬(wàn)年前，我們的祖先能用肉眼觀察到它，但當(dāng)時(shí)，我們所有人的祖先都生活在非洲大陸。

If at that moment, 1.8 million years ago, you had been gazing up at the exploding star from the Rift Valley of East Africa, you might well have heard the sound of the earliest human hands, creating the oldest known humanly made 'thing'. Those hands were shaping stone tools; tools that represent the first step on the great journey of shaping our world. For me, it's making 'things' and then coming to depend on 'things' that sets us apart from all other animals and, ultimately, turns us into the humans we are today. It's one of those very first stone tools that I'm going to be looking at in the next programme.

如果180萬(wàn)年前的那一刻，你正立于東非大裂谷仰望著那顆爆炸的恒星，也許你還能聽(tīng)到初民用雙手創(chuàng)造已知的最古老的“人造物”的聲響。那雙手在塑造石質(zhì)工具，它們象征著人類改造世界偉大征程的第一步。我認(rèn)為，正是制作物品和依賴物品把我們同動(dòng)物區(qū)別開(kāi)來(lái)，并最終使我們進(jìn)化成今天的人類。下期節(jié)目我要介紹的正是一件初民時(shí)期的石質(zhì)工具。

小編補(bǔ)充：

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.

大英博物館館長(zhǎng)尼爾?麥克?格雷戈?duì)?NeilMacGregor)通過(guò)精選的100件展品，向我們重述了人類由石斧頭到信用卡的進(jìn)化史。

At the age of eight, Neil visited the British Museum for the first time and came face to face with an object that fascinated and intrigued him ever since, an Egyptian mummy. Hornedjitef was a priest who died around 2,250 years ago, and he designed a coffin that, he believed, would help him navigate his way to the afterlife. Little did he know that this afterlife would be as a museum exhibit in London. This ornate coffin holds secrets to the understanding of his religion, society and Egypt's connections to the rest of the world.

八歲的尼爾(Neil)第一次參觀大英博物館時(shí)，便直面一件讓他極為著迷和好奇的展品——一個(gè)埃及木乃伊。2,250年前去世的霍尼杰提夫 (Hornedjitef)曾是一位牧師，他設(shè)計(jì)了一副自認(rèn)為能引導(dǎo)他到達(dá)來(lái)世的棺槨。他并未預(yù)測(cè)到他的來(lái)生將是倫敦博物館的一件展品。那些關(guān)于他的宗教，社會(huì)以及埃及同世界的聯(lián)系的秘密就塵封在他華麗的棺材里。

Neil tells the story of Hornedjitef's mummy case with contributions from egyptologist John Taylor, Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif and Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.

尼爾(Neil)協(xié)同埃及學(xué)學(xué)者約翰?泰勒(John Taylor)，埃及作家阿達(dá)芙?蘇耶夫(Ahdaf Soueif)，以及印度經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家、諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)得主阿瑪?shù)賮?森(Amartya Sen)，為我們講述了木乃伊霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)的故事。

This is the mummy of Hornedjitef an Egyptian priest who was buried in a coffin, within a second, outer coffin. Examining his body using CAT scans and X-rays revealed that he suffered from arthritis and osteoporosis suggesting he was a mature man when he died. The embalmers have placed four packages inside his torso, probably his lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. He lived over a thousand years after Tutankhamun and Ramesses the Great at a time when Egypt was ruled by Greek kings.

霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)是一位埃及牧師。這就是他的木乃伊，裝在一副棺槨(棺槨是兩個(gè)棺材套在一起，內(nèi)棺稱“棺”，棺套稱“槨”，即所謂 “內(nèi)棺外槨”——譯者注)里。電腦軸向斷層掃描和X放射線的檢查結(jié)果表明他生前患有關(guān)節(jié)炎和骨質(zhì)疏松癥，這暗示了他死時(shí)已成年。制作木乃伊的技師在他的身體里放置了四套小包裹，大概分布于他的肺、肝、胃及腸內(nèi)。他生于法老圖坦卡蒙(Tutankhamun)和法老拉美西斯(Ramesses)二世之后的 1000多年，正值埃及臣服于希臘城邦邦主的統(tǒng)治時(shí)期。

Why did the Egyptians mummify their dead?

埃及人為什么要將死尸制成木乃伊呢?

When ancient Egyptians like Hornedjitef died they believed they were setting off on a journey from this world to the afterlife. The process of mummification, spells and elaborate coffins enabled them to travel to the next world. This coffin is decorated with images of gods and extracts from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. A figure of the sky goddess Nut is painted on the interior of this coffin. This symbolically locates Hornedjitef in the womb of the goddess, ready to experience rebirth.

就像霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)一樣，古埃及人認(rèn)為人死后便開(kāi)始了一段從現(xiàn)世超度到來(lái)世的漫長(zhǎng)旅程。干尸制作，咒語(yǔ)以及精雕細(xì)琢的棺槨能將他們超度到來(lái)世。棺材上裝飾著神的形象以及《埃及亡靈書(shū)》中的片段。棺材內(nèi)部繪有天空之神努特(Nut)，象征著霍尼杰提夫(Hornedjitef)位于天空之神的子宮等待重生。