So how does one manage to get oneself into the afterlife? Of course, getting to the afterlife is frightfully easy to do, but to be more specific, we must ask, how does one get into a good afterlife?

This is a question which goes back to remote antiquity, and even today there is a large number of people eager to answer. One of the earliest answers to finding a good afterlife emerges from the desert sands, in manuscripts of ancient Egypt.

This information is in a curious scroll known today as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, but is more properly called The Book of Coming Forth by Day. The editions we have are derived from a text called the Papyrus of Ani, which was written around 1240 B.C. and stuffed into the coffin of a scribe named Ani as a kind of guidebook, on how to navigate from this world to the next.

The Book of the Dead is not a holy book like the Bible. It does not exist in any one edition or text, but rather it is a collection of prayers and directions for the soul of a dead man to eternal life. There are four separate texts of the Papyrus of Ani, all of which are slightly different. In all probability, these spells, and many others now lost to us, were common among the Egyptian religious elites. The funerary priests who attended to the dead could collect an assortment of them, have the scribes write down what they believed were the best selection or most useful one, and that would be buried with the dead.

The development of these spells goes back to the period of the Old Kingdom and the age of the Pyramids (2700-2400 B.C.). The oldest pyramids, including the famous three at Giza, have no writings of any kind on the interior walls. But as the pyramid age drew to its close, the kings of Egypt began to have sacred spells carved onto the interior walls of their pyramid tombs. These earliest periods of spells are known collectively as the Pyramid Texts, of which we have 759 known examples.

With the passage of time, this custom of written instruction changed in the First Intermediate Period (2200-2040 B.C.) and the Middle Kingdom period (2040-1782 B.C.), when the custom shifted to the writing of the spells on or inside the coffins of the dead. This kind of collection came to be known as the Coffin Texts, of which we have 1148 distinct spells. The progression to the New Kingdom Period (around 1570-1069 B.C.) led to the much more portable papyrus editions, of which Ani is the best known example. Taken as a group, the combined Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts and the Book of Coming Forth by Day offer a description of the Egyptian afterlife.

We read that at death, the soul of the properly mummified dead was met by Anubis, the god of burial and mummification in the tomb. From there one was led to a passage called the Duat where various trials took place. The wise Egyptian had with him not only his collection of spells to assist him, he was fortified by stores of food, drink, clothing, household objects and other necessaries for use in the afterlife. The Duat was presided over by the god Osirus, who was the lord of the dead. The journey through the Duat is described like a boat ride, giving a supernatural parallel to travels among the living on the Nile. Along the trip the soul passed through a series of doors, each guarded by a god bearing long knives. The dead had to identify the gods by their secret names, which were fearful things like “He who dances in blood” or “mistress of anger.” One then had to recite one of the many spells to be allowed to pass the gate. Those who could not do so were destroyed and gained no afterlife.

“I know thee, and I know thy name, and I know the name of the being who is within thee: ‘She who repeateth slaughters, who burneth up the fiends, the mistress of every pylon, the lady to whom acclamation is made on the day of hearing iniquity’ is thy name. Thou halt the judgment of the feeble bandaged one.”

Then followed their desired reply, “Pass on, then, thou art pure.”

After many such trials, the dead then entered into the Hall of Maat, or justice. There the dead had to address the 42 assessor gods by their correct names, and declare that they were innocent of a number of specific sins. A brief section reads, “O fiery eyed who comes from KhemI have not committed corruption, O flaming one who comes from Khetkhet, I have not stolen gods offerings, O breaker of bones who comes from Henennesut, I have not told lies. O flame thrower who comes from Hutkaptah, I have not removed food.”

After these and many other trials, the heart of the dead pilgrim was taken to the scales of justice, where their heart was placed on a scale and weighed against the weight of the feather of justice. Those with heavy heart, weighed down by sin were destroyed, but for the righteous, whose hearts were lighter than the feather, there awaited admission to the Seket Aaru, or the Field of Reeds, a fertile green land with flowing cool waters, where gods and mortals lived together in happiness forever.

And what of the scribe Ani, who in life had been a senior administrator in the granaries of the Temples at Thebes? We are assured by his papyrus that both he and his wife, Tutu, were indeed justified by the god Osirus and granted immortality. As for his famous papyrus that guided Ani through the afterlife, it was acquired by E.A. Wallis Budge, then keeper of Egyptian antiquities of the British Museum. Budge purchased the manuscript from some shady dealers in 1888. But when the dealers were arrested and the papyrus was impounded, Budge responded by throwing a lavish dinner party for the police. But during the meal, Budge had arranged for some of his cronies to tunnel their way into the storeroom where the manuscript was being kept. He smuggled the papyrus scroll out of Egypt and into London, where it remains to this day. While it is good to know the eternal fate of the honest Ani, one might worry what the gods’ judgment might be concerning Mr. Budge.

Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor emeritus of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest. Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at gnyssa@verizon.net or follow him on Twitter @Fatherelder.