Burial of Bukhaef

The discovery of a yellow/white on black coffin, shabtis, and a fragmentary Book of the Dead papyrus of Bukhaef by the Egyptian Expedition in 2020–2021 from a shaft near the pyramid of Neith in the Teti Pyramid cemetery is discussed. The material dates to the late Eighteenth-early Nineteenth Dynasties.

The Ultimate Commitment

In the ancient Near East, the “heart” is the center of memory and decision-making, and in Mesopotamian extispicy, the “liver” is the “tablet of the gods” on which the gods inscribe a “true verdict,” providing basic guidance for the people. In international treaties, and especially in Assyrian treaties, emphasis is placed on the importance of “full-hearted” loyalty to the suzerain, going beyond mere “lip service.” The Egyptian “Book of the Dead” likewise emphasizes the central importance of the true testimony of the heart as decisive in the dangerous transit to the afterlife, to becoming an Osiris. These sources combine to emphasize the ultimate commitment expressed by the reference in Jeremiah 31:33 to God’s forthcoming “new covenant” which God will write on the hearts of the people. This is, as it were, a “programming” which transforms them in such a way that they will, by inner necessity, be a loyal people, submitting themselves to God’s guidance and protection.

Two Egyptian Heart-Scarabs from Sicily and a Parallel from Berlin

Two Egyptian heart-scarabs, both connected to the city of Cefalù, are presented here: the first one, at Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, was published in 1942 by E. Bacchi, as one of the few heart-scarabs found outside Egypt, on the rock of Cefalù. Its text has been checked and some new readings are proposed. Inscribed for a Chantress of Bastet, it shows a peculiar decoration on the first register, looking like a lunette, then the traditional beginning of Chapter 30B of the Book of the Dead, typical for heart-scarabs, combined with a rare variant. It had remained a unicum until July 2020, when a parallel in the Berlin Museum came to our knowledge, and this is published here as well: the same decoration in the first register and the same text, although shorter. Mainly on the base of prosopographical data, a date to the Twenty-second Dynasty seems appropriate for the Berlin scarab, and consequently for the one in Palermo, which could even belong to a member of the same family. The owner of the scarab in Berlin shows a set of priestly titles that are typical of Per-Sopdu/Saft el-Henna, which therefore may be an indication of its origin. The second “Sicilian” scarab, held at Cefalù itself in the collection of Enrico Pirajno Baron of Mandralisca, after whom the Museum is named, is unpublished. Its owner was another Chantress, serving Amun-Re, and nearly contemporary: it is to be dated to the early Third Intermediate Period, Twenty-first – Twenty-second Dynasty. In the Appendix at the end, notes and remarks on the provenance of the two scarabs in Sicily, documenting mainly the discovery of the Palermo scarab. ملخص تظهر هنا قطعتان تمائم جعران القلب المصرية، ترتبط كلاهما بمدينة تشِفالو: القطعة الأولى، معروضة في المتحف الأثري الإقليمي في مدينة باليرمو، نُشِر عنها في عام 1942 من قبل إ. باكي كاحدى جعران القلب الفرعونية النادرة التي وُجدت خارج الأراضي المصرية. تَحدّث المؤلفون عن ظروف اكتشافها، تحققوا مرة أخرى من النص واقترحوا بعض القراءات الجديدة. كانت تملكها مطربة باستيت، وهو لقب لم يتم تناوله ضمن المنشورات الحالية لمجموعة جعران القلب. إنها على غرار جعران القلب التي لم ينشر عنها ومحفوظة في برلين، من المدهش أنها تنتمي على الأرجح إلى شخص من نفس أفراد تلك العائلة، تعود غالباً إلى تاريخ الأسرة الثانية والعشرين. كانت تنتمي جعران برلين إلى والد الإله أنوبيس وإلى الكاهن بتاح-ون، وهو لقب خاص لبير-سوبدو / سفت-الحنا. تميمة جعران القلب الثانية الموجودة في جزيرة صقلية، محفوظة في نفس موقع تشِفالو، في متحف ماندراليسكا، لم يُنشر عنها أي مقال: مرة أخرى شاءت الظروف أن تكون مالكتها مغنية، لكنها كانت تخدم آمون رع. تعود القطعة أيضاً إلى أوائل فترة الإنتقال الثالثة.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Bobok and Philip K. Dick’s Ubik: The Mystique of Otherness

This article presents a comparative analysis of non-traditional images of otherness described by F. M. Dostoevsky in his short story Bobok (1873) and P. K. Dick in the novel Ubik (1969). With an interval of a century, the two works, Russian and American, describe the state of so-called “half-life” granted to people after their death before the final transition of the soul to the transcendent world. This state lasts from six months to two years, an artistic fiction where the writers demonstrate that their characters have lost their national eschatological traditions and their souls are filled with a moral vacuum as a result of the lost opportunity to correct their lives through “mortal memory”. Thus, their lives may be called “lives by inertia”. The article describes the theosophical influence of Heaven and Hell, a mystical work by E. Swedenborg, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead on the thanatological concepts of the works.