I · THE OBJECT · BRITISH MUSEUM
Papyrus of Ani
▶ Listen · narrated
Egyptians compiled individual books of spells for the dead. This one, made for the scribe Ani around 1250 BC, survives with colour illustrations and shows how he was prepared for the afterlife.
At a glance
- Date
- c. 1250 BC
- Material
- Papyrus
- Dimensions
- 42 × 67 cm (2 ft 2 in)
- Inventory
- EA10470,3
- Location
- British Museum
Look closer
Writing with pictures
This is papyrus treated as an illuminated manuscript. Cursive hieroglyphs share the surface with colour illustrations, so the spells are not only read but seen. The British Museum sheet is 42 centimetres (1 ft 5 in) high and 67 centimetres (2 ft 2 in) wide: a wide, low field meant to be unrolled, not a single framed page.
A book for one man
Egyptians did not issue one fixed Book of the Dead. They compiled individual manuscripts for certain people at death, under the name Book of Going Forth by Day. This copy was assembled for Ani, a scribe of Thebes. Its declarations and spells were meant to help him in the afterlife, not to stand as a universal text for everyone.
Two titles, one genre
Book of the Dead is the familiar modern name. Egyptians called these compilations the Book of Going Forth by Day. Ani's papyrus belongs to that genre: a personal selection of text and image on papyrus, now kept in the British Museum under the inventory number EA10470,3.
The story
The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript made around 1250 BC, during the Nineteenth Dynasty of the New Kingdom, for a Theban scribe named Ani. It is a copy of what Egyptians called the Book of Going Forth by Day — the funerary compilation more widely known today as the Book of the Dead. Such books held declarations and spells intended to help the deceased in the afterlife. They were not printed from a single master. They were put together for particular people, and this one was put together for Ani.
The work takes the form of a scroll. It is written in cursive hieroglyphs and supplied with colour illustrations, which is why it can be classed as both a papyrus and an illuminated manuscript. The portion documented under British Museum number EA10470,3 measures 42 centimetres (1 ft 5 in) in height and 67 centimetres (2 ft 2 in) in width. What survives is dense with text and image rather than spare monumental carving; it was made to be rolled, stored, and read in sections.
The scroll was found in 1888 in Ani's tomb at Thebes by Egyptians trading in illegal antiquities. E. A. Wallis Budge acquired it for the British Museum. In his later account he describes seeing the papyrus, then watching Egyptian police arrest dealers and seal their houses — including one that held objects he had already purchased. He writes that he distracted the guards with a meal while locals tunnelled under the walls to recover the goods. The papyrus and other pieces were packed in custom tin boxes and smuggled to the principal librarian at the British Museum. Budge was afterward paid a gratuity of 150 pounds from the British Treasury on the museum's behalf.
The manuscript has often been called the finest surviving example of a Book of the Dead. That judgment is a matter of taste and of what one values in a funerary papyrus, but the combination of extended text and coloured illustration has kept Ani's copy at the centre of how the genre is studied and shown. It is less a closed sacred book than a practical, personal guide that happened to be made with unusual care — and then to leave Egypt by a route as well documented, from the buyer's side, as it is troubling from the standpoint of excavation and export law.
Why it mattered then
For Ani, a Book of Going Forth by Day was equipment for death. Declarations and spells were gathered so that he might manage the demands of the afterlife. A painted papyrus of this kind was not a public inscription on a temple wall; it was made to accompany him into the tomb. That it was compiled for him personally mattered. The selection of text belonged to his burial, not to a general library. As a scribe at Thebes he belonged to the literate world in which such a manuscript was both intelligible and attainable. The book answered a religious need and marked a social one: proper provision for the next life, in a form his training would have allowed him to value.
Why it matters now
The papyrus still matters because text and image survive together on a scale that lets modern readers see how a New Kingdom Egyptian funerary book actually looked and worked as an object. It has shaped editions, translations, and museum displays of the Book of the Dead for more than a century. It also matters as a case of how major Egyptian antiquities reached London. The find was not a controlled excavation with a published tomb record. It passed through the illegal antiquities trade and a smuggling route described by the man who bought it. Anyone who uses Ani's book as evidence for ancient belief has to hold that later history in view as well: the spells are ancient, but the path into the showcase is nineteenth-century.
The surprising detail
Budge's own story of the acquisition is almost theatrical. After police sealed the dealers' houses, he claims he kept the guards busy with a meal while people tunnelled under a wall to pull out his purchases, Ani's papyrus among them. The material then travelled in custom tin boxes to the British Museum, and he received a 150-pound Treasury gratuity for securing it. Whether every detail happened as he told it, the account is striking for how little trouble it takes to present removal under seal as a success.
What is disputed
The fullest narrative of how the papyrus left Egypt is Budge's own. Independent contemporary detail is thinner, and the discovery was made through the illegal antiquities trade, not a recorded scientific excavation. The original tomb context was not documented to modern standards, so much of what surrounded Ani's burial is simply lost.
How it got here
Found in 1888 in Ani's tomb at Thebes by Egyptians dealing in illegal antiquities, the papyrus was acquired by E. A. Wallis Budge for the British Museum. Budge described having the sealed premises entered by a tunnel, packing the objects in tin boxes, and shipping them to the museum's principal librarian; he later received a 150-pound gratuity from the British Treasury on the museum's behalf. The episode belongs to a period when Egyptian authorities were already trying to control the antiquities trade, while European museums continued to buy and export on a large scale. The object remains in the British Museum as EA10470,3.
Remember this
A Book of the Dead made for one Theban scribe around 1250 BC — spells and colour on papyrus, and a journey to London as revealing as the text.
Test yourself
Books of the Dead were compiled for individuals rather than issued as one standard text. What does that change about how we should read the Papyrus of Ani?
It means the papyrus is not a universal scripture but a selection assembled for one man, the Theban scribe Ani. The declarations and spells are those prepared for his afterlife, not a fixed canon every Egyptian shared in identical form. The manuscript can still speak to wider New Kingdom beliefs, yet it remains, first of all, one person's equipment for death. A correct reading holds both facts at once.
Go deeper
- Papyrus of Ani · Wikipedia
- Papyrus of Ani — Wikidata · Wikidata
- Papyrus of Ani — collection record · britishmuseum.org
Image: Unknown author Unknown author, Public domain. Licence: Public domain. Source.