147-535: The Cipher Manuscripts are a collection of 60 folios containing the structural outline of a series of magical initiation rituals corresponding to the spiritual elements of Earth , Air , Water and Fire . The " occult " materials in the Manuscripts are a compendium of the classical magical theory and symbolism known in the Western world up until the middle of the 19th century, combined to create an encompassing model of
294-473: A Book of the Dead varies widely. Some contain lavish color illustrations, even making use of gold leaf . Others contain only line drawings, or one simple illustration at the opening. Book of the Dead papyri were often the work of several different scribes and artists whose work was literally pasted together. It is usually possible to identify the style of more than one scribe used on a given manuscript, even when
441-533: A circumstellar disk , and then the planets grow out of that disk with the Sun. A nebula contains gas, ice grains, and dust (including primordial nuclides ). According to nebular theory , planetesimals formed by accretion , with the primordial Earth being estimated as likely taking anywhere from 70 to 100 million years to form. Estimates of the age of the Moon range from 4.5 Ga to significantly younger. A leading hypothesis
588-672: A Charter to operate a Lodge of the Order in England. Westcott's first Golden Dawn temple was the Isis-Urania Temple , styled "No. 3." Temple No. 1 would have been Fräulein Sprengel's lodge, and No. 2 was supposedly an abortive attempt at a lodge by some unnamed persons in London (possibly a reference to Mackenzie and other S.R.I.A. members some years earlier). According to Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett ,
735-492: A common barycenter every 27.32 days relative to the background stars. When combined with the Earth–Moon system's common orbit around the Sun, the period of the synodic month , from new moon to new moon, is 29.53 days. Viewed from the celestial north pole , the motion of Earth, the Moon, and their axial rotations are all counterclockwise . Viewed from a vantage point above the Sun and Earth's north poles, Earth orbits in
882-524: A comparative edition of the Book of the Dead , drawing on all relevant manuscripts. This project was undertaken by Édouard Naville , starting in 1875 and completed in 1886, producing a three-volume work including a selection of vignettes for every one of the 186 spells he worked with, the more significant variations of the text for every spell, and commentary. In 1867 Samuel Birch of the British Museum published
1029-542: A counterclockwise direction about the Sun. The orbital and axial planes are not precisely aligned: Earth's axis is tilted some 23.44 degrees from the perpendicular to the Earth–Sun plane (the ecliptic ), and the Earth-Moon plane is tilted up to ±5.1 degrees against the Earth–Sun plane. Without this tilt, there would be an eclipse every two weeks, alternating between lunar eclipses and solar eclipses . The Hill sphere , or
1176-420: A full rotation about its axis so that the Sun returns to the meridian . The orbital speed of Earth averages about 29.78 km/s (107,200 km/h; 66,600 mph), which is fast enough to travel a distance equal to Earth's diameter, about 12,742 km (7,918 mi), in seven minutes, and the distance from Earth to the Moon, 384,400 km (238,900 mi), in about 3.5 hours. The Moon and Earth orbit
1323-421: A globe-spanning mid-ocean ridge system. At Earth's polar regions , the ocean surface is covered by seasonally variable amounts of sea ice that often connects with polar land, permafrost and ice sheets , forming polar ice caps . Earth's land covers 29.2%, or 149 million km (58 million sq mi) of Earth's surface. The land surface includes many islands around the globe, but most of
1470-425: A liquid outer core that generates a magnetosphere capable of deflecting most of the destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation . Earth has a dynamic atmosphere , which sustains Earth's surface conditions and protects it from most meteoroids and UV-light at entry . It has a composition of primarily nitrogen and oxygen . Water vapor is widely present in the atmosphere, forming clouds that cover most of
1617-573: A number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat , or underworld, and into the afterlife and written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years. In 1842, the Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius introduced for these texts the German name Todtenbuch (modern spelling Totenbuch ), translated to English as 'Book of the Dead'. The original Egyptian name for
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#17330848803751764-414: A range of purposes. Some are intended to give the deceased mystical knowledge in the afterlife, or perhaps to identify them with the gods: for instance, Spell 17 is an obscure and lengthy description of the god Atum . Others are incantations to ensure the different elements of the dead person's being were preserved and reunited, and to give the deceased control over the world around him. Still others protect
1911-477: A series that publishes the manuscripts themselves, Handschriften des Altägyptischen Totenbuches . Both are in print by Harrassowitz Verlag. Orientverlag has released another series of related monographs, Totenbuchtexte , focused on analysis, synoptic comparison, and textual criticism. Research work on the Book of the Dead has always posed technical difficulties thanks to the need to copy very long hieroglyphic texts. Initially, these were copied out by hand, with
2058-401: A similar arrangement to that used when hieroglyphs were carved on tomb walls or monuments. Illustrations were put in frames above, below, or between the columns of text. The largest illustrations took up a full page of papyrus. From the 21st Dynasty onward, more copies of the Book of the Dead are found in hieratic script. The calligraphy is similar to that of other hieratic manuscripts of
2205-423: A spell, also included in the Book of the Dead , requiring them to undertake any manual labour that might be the owner's duty in the afterlife. It is also clear that the dead not only went to a place where the gods lived, but that they acquired divine characteristics themselves. In many occasions, the deceased is mentioned as "The Osiris – [ Name ]" in the Book of the Dead . The path to the afterlife as laid out in
2352-495: A third of the hieratic papyri from the Late and Ptolemaic Periods. The dimensions of a Book of the Dead could vary widely; the longest is 40 m long while some are as short as 1 m. They are composed of sheets of papyrus joined together, the individual papyri varying in width from 15 cm to 45 cm. The scribes working on Book of the Dead papyri took more care over their work than those working on more mundane texts; care
2499-432: A varying selection of religious and magical texts and vary considerably in their illustration. Some people seem to have commissioned their own copies of the Book of the Dead , perhaps choosing the spells they thought most vital in their own progression to the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was most commonly written in hieroglyphic or hieratic script on a papyrus scroll, and often illustrated with vignettes depicting
2646-508: Is rounded into an ellipsoid with a circumference of about 40,000 km. It is the densest planet in the Solar System . Of the four rocky planets , it is the largest and most massive. Earth is about eight light-minutes away from the Sun and orbits it , taking a year (about 365.25 days) to complete one revolution. Earth rotates around its own axis in slightly less than a day (in about 23 hours and 56 minutes). Earth's axis of rotation
2793-456: Is a chemically distinct silicate solid crust, which is underlain by a highly viscous solid mantle. The crust is separated from the mantle by the Mohorovičić discontinuity . The thickness of the crust varies from about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) under the oceans to 30–50 km (19–31 mi) for the continents. The crust and the cold, rigid, top of the upper mantle are collectively known as
2940-634: Is a defined order. The Books of the Dead from the Saite period tend to organize the Chapters into four sections: The spells in the Book of the Dead depict Egyptian beliefs about the nature of death and the afterlife. The Book of the Dead is a vital source of information about Egyptian beliefs in this area. One aspect of death was the disintegration of the various kheperu , or modes of existence. Funerary rituals served to re-integrate these different aspects of being. Mummification served to preserve and transform
3087-531: Is approximately 9.8 m/s (32 ft/s ). Local differences in topography, geology, and deeper tectonic structure cause local and broad regional differences in Earth's gravitational field, known as gravity anomalies . The main part of Earth's magnetic field is generated in the core, the site of a dynamo process that converts the kinetic energy of thermally and compositionally driven convection into electrical and magnetic field energy. The field extends outwards from
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#17330848803753234-517: Is contained in 3.45 billion-year-old Australian rocks showing fossils of microorganisms . During the Neoproterozoic , 1000 to 539 Ma , much of Earth might have been covered in ice. This hypothesis has been termed " Snowball Earth ", and it is of particular interest because it preceded the Cambrian explosion , when multicellular life forms significantly increased in complexity. Following
3381-640: Is depicted as a lush, plentiful version of the Egyptian way of living. There are fields, crops, oxen, people and waterways. The deceased person is shown encountering the Great Ennead , a group of gods, as well as his or her own parents. While the depiction of the Field of Reeds is pleasant and plentiful, it is also clear that manual labour is required. For this reason burials included a number of statuettes named shabti , or later ushebti . These statuettes were inscribed with
3528-452: Is farthest out from its center of mass at its equatorial bulge, the summit of the volcano Chimborazo in Ecuador (6,384.4 km or 3,967.1 mi) is its farthest point out. Parallel to the rigid land topography the ocean exhibits a more dynamic topography . To measure the local variation of Earth's topography, geodesy employs an idealized Earth producing a geoid shape. Such a shape
3675-516: Is gained if the ocean is idealized, covering Earth completely and without any perturbations such as tides and winds. The result is a smooth but irregular geoid surface, providing a mean sea level (MSL) as a reference level for topographic measurements. Earth's surface is the boundary between the atmosphere, and the solid Earth and oceans. Defined in this way, it has an area of about 510 million km (197 million sq mi). Earth can be divided into two hemispheres : by latitude into
3822-482: Is land, most of which is located in the form of continental landmasses within Earth's land hemisphere . Most of Earth's land is at least somewhat humid and covered by vegetation , while large sheets of ice at Earth's polar deserts retain more water than Earth's groundwater , lakes, rivers and atmospheric water combined. Earth's crust consists of slowly moving tectonic plates , which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes , and earthquakes. Earth has
3969-426: Is liquid under normal atmospheric pressure. Differences in the amount of captured energy between geographic regions (as with the equatorial region receiving more sunlight than the polar regions) drive atmospheric and ocean currents , producing a global climate system with different climate regions , and a range of weather phenomena such as precipitation , allowing components such as nitrogen to cycle . Earth
4116-501: Is now slightly longer than it was during the 19th century due to tidal deceleration , each day varies between 0 and 2 ms longer than the mean solar day. Earth's rotation period relative to the fixed stars , called its stellar day by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), is 86,164.0989 seconds of mean solar time ( UT1 ), or 23 56 4.0989 . Earth's rotation period relative to
4263-612: Is rare, though the alternative spelling Gaia has become common due to the Gaia hypothesis , in which case its pronunciation is / ˈ ɡ aɪ . ə / rather than the more classical English / ˈ ɡ eɪ . ə / . There are a number of adjectives for the planet Earth. The word "earthly" is derived from "Earth". From the Latin Terra comes terran / ˈ t ɛr ə n / , terrestrial / t ə ˈ r ɛ s t r i ə l / , and (via French) terrene / t ə ˈ r iː n / , and from
4410-477: Is that it was formed by accretion from material loosed from Earth after a Mars -sized object with about 10% of Earth's mass, named Theia , collided with Earth. It hit Earth with a glancing blow and some of its mass merged with Earth. Between approximately 4.1 and 3.8 Ga , numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment of
4557-453: Is the basis for the astronomical unit (AU) and is equal to roughly 8.3 light minutes or 380 times Earth's distance to the Moon . Earth orbits the Sun every 365.2564 mean solar days , or one sidereal year . With an apparent movement of the Sun in Earth's sky at a rate of about 1°/day eastward, which is one apparent Sun or Moon diameter every 12 hours. Due to this motion, on average it takes 24 hours—a solar day—for Earth to complete
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4704-457: Is tied to that of the Sun. Over the next 1.1 billion years , solar luminosity will increase by 10%, and over the next 3.5 billion years by 40%. Earth's increasing surface temperature will accelerate the inorganic carbon cycle , possibly reducing CO 2 concentration to levels lethally low for current plants ( 10 ppm for C4 photosynthesis ) in approximately 100–900 million years . A lack of vegetation would result in
4851-451: Is tilted with respect to the perpendicular to its orbital plane around the Sun, producing seasons . Earth is orbited by one permanent natural satellite , the Moon , which orbits Earth at 384,400 km (1.28 light seconds) and is roughly a quarter as wide as Earth. The Moon's gravity helps stabilize Earth's axis, causes tides and gradually slows Earth's rotation . Tidal locking has made
4998-531: The Amduat . During the 25th and 26th Dynasties , the Book of the Dead was updated, revised and standardized. Spells were ordered and numbered consistently for the first time. This standardized version is known today as the 'Saite recension', after the Saite (26th) Dynasty. In the Late period and Ptolemaic period , the Book of the Dead continued to be based on the Saite recension, though increasingly abbreviated towards
5145-593: The Book of the Dead Project, as it is called, maintains a database of documentation and photography covering 80% of extant copies and fragments from the corpus of Book of the Dead texts, and provides current services to Egyptologists. It is housed at the University of Bonn, with much material available online. Affiliated scholars are authoring a series of monograph studies, the Studien zum Altägyptischen Totenbuch , alongside
5292-463: The Book of the Dead develop and spread further. The famous Spell 125, the ' Weighing of the Heart ', is first known from the reign of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III , c. 1475 BC . From this period onward the Book of the Dead was typically written on a papyrus scroll, and the text illustrated with vignettes . During the 19th Dynasty in particular, the vignettes tended to be lavish, sometimes at
5439-498: The Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The deceased was required to pass a series of gates, caverns and mounds guarded by supernatural creatures. These terrifying entities were armed with enormous knives and are illustrated in grotesque forms, typically as human figures with the heads of animals or combinations of different ferocious beasts. Their names—for instance, "He who lives on snakes" or "He who dances in blood"—are equally grotesque. These creatures had to be pacified by reciting
5586-560: The Book of the Dead , more spells have been identified, and the total now stands at 192. In the 1970s, Ursula Rößler-Köhler at the University of Bonn began a working group to develop the history of Book of the Dead texts. This later received sponsorship from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the German Research Foundation, in 2004 coming under the auspices of the German Academies of Sciences and Arts. Today
5733-704: The Book of the Dead . Towards the end of the Old Kingdom, the Pyramid Texts ceased to be an exclusively royal privilege, and were adopted by regional governors and other high-ranking officials. In the Middle Kingdom , a new funerary text emerged, the Coffin Texts . The Coffin Texts used a newer version of the language, new spells, and included illustrations for the first time. The Coffin Texts were most commonly written on
5880-616: The Cipher Manuscripts are not very different from that of high-degree Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, and Mackenzie and the members of the S.R.I.A. were capable-enough esoteric scholars, with access to works on the Qabalah, Hermeticism, and Egyptology in Masonic libraries, to have combined it all into the form followed by the Golden Dawn. However, there is no conclusive evidence to prove any of
6027-530: The Cipher Manuscripts remain a mystery to this day. Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life . This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world , the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water . Almost all of Earth's water is contained in its global ocean, covering 70.8% of Earth's crust . The remaining 29.2% of Earth's crust
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6174-566: The Milky Way and orbits about 28,000 light-years from its center. It is about 20 light-years above the galactic plane in the Orion Arm . The axial tilt of Earth is approximately 23.439281° with the axis of its orbit plane, always pointing towards the Celestial Poles . Due to Earth's axial tilt, the amount of sunlight reaching any given point on the surface varies over the course of
6321-722: The Pacific , North American , Eurasian , African , Antarctic , Indo-Australian , and South American . Other notable plates include the Arabian Plate , the Caribbean Plate , the Nazca Plate off the west coast of South America and the Scotia Plate in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The Australian Plate fused with the Indian Plate between 50 and 55 Ma . The fastest-moving plates are
6468-485: The Second Intermediate Period , around 1700 BC. The earliest known occurrence of the spells included in the Book of the Dead is from the coffin of Queen Mentuhotep , of the 16th Dynasty , where the new spells were included amongst older texts known from the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Some of the spells introduced at this time claim an older provenance; for instance the rubric to spell 30B states that it
6615-734: The Western mystery tradition , and arranged into a syllabus of a graded course of instruction in magical symbolism. It was used as the structure for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , after the manuscripts came into the possession of prominent SRIA members. The folios are drawn in black ink on cotton paper watermarked 1809. The text is plain English written from right to left in a simple substitution cryptogram . Numerals are substituted by Hebrew letters – Alef=1, Bet=2, etc. Crude drawings of diagrams, magical implements and tarot cards are interspersed in
6762-419: The asthenosphere , the solid but less-viscous part of the upper mantle that can flow and move along with the plates. As the tectonic plates migrate, oceanic crust is subducted under the leading edges of the plates at convergent boundaries. At the same time, the upwelling of mantle material at divergent boundaries creates mid-ocean ridges. The combination of these processes recycles the oceanic crust back into
6909-415: The celestial equator , this is equivalent to an apparent diameter of the Sun or the Moon every two minutes; from Earth's surface, the apparent sizes of the Sun and the Moon are approximately the same. Earth orbits the Sun, making Earth the third-closest planet to the Sun and part of the inner Solar System . Earth's average orbital distance is about 150 million km (93 million mi), which
7056-408: The ocean floor form the top of Earth's crust , which together with parts of the upper mantle form Earth's lithosphere . Earth's crust may be divided into oceanic and continental crust. Beneath the ocean-floor sediments, the oceanic crust is predominantly basaltic , while the continental crust may include lower density materials such as granite , sediments and metamorphic rocks. Nearly 75% of
7203-430: The precessing or moving mean March equinox (when the Sun is at 90° on the equator), is 86,164.0905 seconds of mean solar time (UT1) (23 56 4.0905 ) . Thus the sidereal day is shorter than the stellar day by about 8.4 ms. Apart from meteors within the atmosphere and low-orbiting satellites, the main apparent motion of celestial bodies in Earth's sky is to the west at a rate of 15°/h = 15'/min. For bodies near
7350-413: The sphere of gravitational influence , of Earth is about 1.5 million km (930,000 mi) in radius. This is the maximum distance at which Earth's gravitational influence is stronger than that of the more distant Sun and planets. Objects must orbit Earth within this radius, or they can become unbound by the gravitational perturbation of the Sun. Earth, along with the Solar System, is situated in
7497-464: The "last ice age", covered large parts of the continents, to the middle latitudes, in ice and ended about 11,700 years ago. Chemical reactions led to the first self-replicating molecules about four billion years ago. A half billion years later, the last common ancestor of all current life arose. The evolution of photosynthesis allowed the Sun's energy to be harvested directly by life forms. The resultant molecular oxygen ( O 2 ) accumulated in
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#17330848803757644-519: The 3rd millennium BC. Other spells were composed later in Egyptian history, dating to the Third Intermediate Period (11th to 7th centuries BC). A number of the spells which make up the Book continued to be separately inscribed on tomb walls and sarcophagi , as the spells from which they originated always had been. There was no single or canonical Book of the Dead . The surviving papyri contain
7791-491: The Afterlife. John Taylor points out the wording of Spells 30B and 125 suggests a pragmatic approach to morality; by preventing the heart from contradicting him with any inconvenient truths, it seems that the deceased could enter the afterlife even if their life had not been entirely pure. Ogden Goelet says "without an exemplary and moral existence, there was no hope for a successful afterlife", while Geraldine Pinch suggests that
7938-479: The Cambrian explosion, 535 Ma , there have been at least five major mass extinctions and many minor ones. Apart from the proposed current Holocene extinction event, the most recent was 66 Ma , when an asteroid impact triggered the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and other large reptiles, but largely spared small animals such as insects, mammals , lizards and birds. Mammalian life has diversified over
8085-645: The Dead developed from a tradition of funerary manuscripts dating back to the Egyptian Old Kingdom . The first funerary texts were the Pyramid Texts , first used in the Pyramid of King Unas of the 5th Dynasty , around 2400 BC. These texts were written on the walls of the burial chambers within pyramids, and were exclusively for the use of the pharaoh (and, from the 6th Dynasty , the queen). The Pyramid Texts were written in an unusual hieroglyphic style; many of
8232-417: The Dead was unique, containing a different mixture of spells drawn from the corpus of texts available. For most of the history of the Book of the Dead there was no defined order or structure. In fact, until Paul Barguet's 1967 "pioneering study" of common themes between texts, Egyptologists concluded there was no internal structure at all. It is only from the Saite period ( 26th Dynasty ) onwards that there
8379-531: The Devourer, stood ready to eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and rather unpleasant end. This scene is remarkable not only for its vividness but as one of the few parts of the Book of the Dead with any explicit moral content. The judgment of the dead and the Negative Confession were a representation of the conventional moral code which governed Egyptian society. For every "I have not..." in
8526-637: The Earth. Terra is also the name of the planet in some Romance languages , languages that evolved from Latin , like Italian and Portuguese , while in other Romance languages the word gave rise to names with slightly altered spellings, like the Spanish Tierra and the French Terre . The Latinate form Gæa or Gaea ( English: / ˈ dʒ iː . ə / ) of the Greek poetic name Gaia ( Γαῖα ; Ancient Greek : [ɡâi̯.a] or [ɡâj.ja] )
8673-527: The Latin Tellus comes tellurian / t ɛ ˈ l ʊər i ə n / and telluric . The oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4.5682 +0.0002 −0.0004 Ga (billion years) ago. By 4.54 ± 0.04 Ga the primordial Earth had formed. The bodies in the Solar System formed and evolved with the Sun. In theory, a solar nebula partitions a volume out of a molecular cloud by gravitational collapse, which begins to spin and flatten into
8820-745: The Moon always face Earth with the same side. Earth, like most other bodies in the Solar System, formed 4.5 billion years ago from gas and dust in the early Solar System . During the first billion years of Earth's history , the ocean formed and then life developed within it. Life spread globally and has been altering Earth's atmosphere and surface, leading to the Great Oxidation Event two billion years ago. Humans emerged 300,000 years ago in Africa and have spread across every continent on Earth. Humans depend on Earth's biosphere and natural resources for their survival, but have increasingly impacted
8967-426: The Moon and, by inference, to that of Earth. Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic activity and outgassing . Water vapor from these sources condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids, protoplanets , and comets . Sufficient water to fill the oceans may have been on Earth since it formed. In this model, atmospheric greenhouse gases kept the oceans from freezing when
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#17330848803759114-522: The Negative Confession is essentially similar to the spells protecting from demons, and that the success of the Weighing of the Heart depended on the mystical knowledge of the true names of the judges rather than on the deceased's moral behavior. A Book of the Dead was produced to order by scribes. They were commissioned by people in preparation for their own funerals, or by the relatives of someone recently deceased. They were expensive items; one source gives
9261-497: The Negative Confession, it is possible to read an unexpressed "Thou shalt not". While the Ten Commandments of Jewish and Christian ethics are rules of conduct laid down by a perceived divine revelation, the Negative Confession is more a divine enforcement of everyday morality. Views differ among Egyptologists about how far the Negative Confession represents a moral absolute, with ethical purity being necessary for progress to
9408-455: The New Kingdom; the text is written in horizontal lines across wide columns (often the column size corresponds to the size of the papyrus sheets of which a scroll is made up). Occasionally a hieratic Book of the Dead contains captions in hieroglyphic. The text of a Book of the Dead was written in both black and red ink, regardless of whether it was in hieroglyphic or hieratic script. Most of
9555-463: The Order in England. Mathers later claimed that only the letters were forgeries, but it seems unlikely that Westcott or Mathers wrote the Manuscripts themselves, as some believe. There is considerable doubt among scholars that Westcott's story is accurate. In particular, the age and contents of the documents have been the subject of much controversy. In particular, the manuscript contains a reference to
9702-458: The Solar System's planetary-sized objects, Earth is the object with the highest density . Earth's mass is approximately 5.97 × 10 kg ( 5.970 Yg ). It is composed mostly of iron (32.1% by mass ), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%), with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements. Due to gravitational separation ,
9849-403: The Sun when the star reaches its maximum radius, otherwise, with tidal effects, it may enter the Sun's atmosphere and be vaporized. Earth has a rounded shape , through hydrostatic equilibrium , with an average diameter of 12,742 kilometres (7,918 mi), making it the fifth largest planetary sized and largest terrestrial object of the Solar System . Due to Earth's rotation it has
9996-524: The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead which was not understood by scholars before the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone in 1822, and not published in translation until 1842. A variety of theories exist as to the real source of the Cipher Manuscript . Some of the more common ones include: In any case, no evidence has ever proven the existence of Fräulein Sprengel or her Lodge. (By Westcott's account,
10143-515: The appropriate spells included in the Book of the Dead ; once pacified they posed no further threat, and could even extend their protection to the dead person. Another breed of supernatural creatures was 'slaughterers' who killed the unrighteous on behalf of Osiris; the Book of the Dead equipped its owner to escape their attentions. As well as these supernatural entities, there were also threats from natural or supernatural animals, including crocodiles, snakes, and beetles. The deceased's first task
10290-413: The assistance either of tracing paper or a camera lucida . In the mid-19th century, hieroglyphic fonts became available and made lithographic reproduction of manuscripts more feasible. In the present day, hieroglyphics can be rendered in desktop publishing software and this, combined with digital print technology, means that the costs of publishing a Book of the Dead may be considerably reduced. However,
10437-425: The atmosphere and due to interaction with ultraviolet solar radiation, formed a protective ozone layer ( O 3 ) in the upper atmosphere. The incorporation of smaller cells within larger ones resulted in the development of complex cells called eukaryotes . True multicellular organisms formed as cells within colonies became increasingly specialized. Aided by the absorption of harmful ultraviolet radiation by
10584-516: The belongings of Mackenzie's mentor, the late Frederick Hockley, and by September 1887, they were decoded by Westcott. The Manuscripts also contained an address of an aged adept named Fräulein (Miss) Anna Sprengel in Germany. According to Westcott, he wrote to Sprengel inquiring about the contents of the papers. Sprengel responded, and after accepting the requests of Westcott and his partner and fellow Mason Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers , issued them
10731-450: The center, the temperature may be up to 6,000 °C (10,830 °F), and the pressure could reach 360 GPa (52 million psi ). Because much of the heat is provided by radioactive decay, scientists postulate that early in Earth's history, before isotopes with short half-lives were depleted, Earth's heat production was much higher. At approximately 3 Gyr , twice the present-day heat would have been produced, increasing
10878-454: The continental crust , particularly during the early stages of Earth's history. New continental crust forms as a result of plate tectonics , a process ultimately driven by the continuous loss of heat from Earth's interior. Over the period of hundreds of millions of years, tectonic forces have caused areas of continental crust to group together to form supercontinents that have subsequently broken apart. At approximately 750 Ma , one of
11025-616: The continental surfaces are covered by sedimentary rocks, although they form about 5% of the mass of the crust. Earth's surface topography comprises both the topography of the ocean surface , and the shape of Earth's land surface. The submarine terrain of the ocean floor has an average bathymetric depth of 4 km, and is as varied as the terrain above sea level. Earth's surface is continually being shaped by internal plate tectonic processes including earthquakes and volcanism ; by weathering and erosion driven by ice, water, wind and temperature; and by biological processes including
11172-419: The core are chaotic; the magnetic poles drift and periodically change alignment. This causes secular variation of the main field and field reversals at irregular intervals averaging a few times every million years. The most recent reversal occurred approximately 700,000 years ago. The extent of Earth's magnetic field in space defines the magnetosphere . Ions and electrons of the solar wind are deflected by
11319-527: The core is primarily composed of the denser elements: iron (88.8%), with smaller amounts of nickel (5.8%), sulfur (4.5%), and less than 1% trace elements. The most common rock constituents of the crust are oxides . Over 99% of the crust is composed of various oxides of eleven elements, principally oxides containing silicon (the silicate minerals ), aluminium, iron, calcium, magnesium, potassium, or sodium. The major heat-producing isotopes within Earth are potassium-40 , uranium-238 , and thorium-232 . At
11466-463: The core, through the mantle, and up to Earth's surface, where it is, approximately, a dipole . The poles of the dipole are located close to Earth's geographic poles. At the equator of the magnetic field, the magnetic-field strength at the surface is 3.05 × 10 T , with a magnetic dipole moment of 7.79 × 10 Am at epoch 2000, decreasing nearly 6% per century (although it still remains stronger than its long time average). The convection movements in
11613-524: The days shorter. Above the Arctic Circle and below the Antarctic Circle there is no daylight at all for part of the year, causing a polar night , and this night extends for several months at the poles themselves. These same latitudes also experience a midnight sun , where the sun remains visible all day. By astronomical convention, the four seasons can be determined by the solstices—the points in
11760-515: The deceased and their journey into the afterlife. The finest extant example of the Egyptian in antiquity is the Papyrus of Ani . Ani was an Egyptian scribe. It was discovered in Luxor in 1888 by Egyptians trading in illegal antiquities. It was acquired by E. A. Wallis Budge , as described in his autobiography By Nile and Tigris in 1888 and was taken to the British Museum , where it remains. The Book of
11907-452: The deceased from harm. In addition to being represented on a Book of the Dead papyrus, these spells appeared on amulets wound into the wrappings of a mummy. Everyday magic made use of amulets in huge numbers. Other items in direct contact with the body in the tomb, such as headrests, were also considered to have amuletic value. A number of spells also refer to Egyptian beliefs about the magical healing power of saliva. Almost every Book of
12054-452: The deceased from various hostile forces or guide him through the underworld past various obstacles. Famously, two spells also deal with the judgment of the deceased in the Weighing of the Heart ritual. Such spells as 26–30, and sometimes spells 6 and 126, relate to the heart and were inscribed on scarabs. The texts and images of the Book of the Dead were magical as well as religious. Magic
12201-605: The earliest known supercontinents, Rodinia , began to break apart. The continents later recombined to form Pannotia at 600–540 Ma , then finally Pangaea , which also began to break apart at 180 Ma . The most recent pattern of ice ages began about 40 Ma , and then intensified during the Pleistocene about 3 Ma . High- and middle-latitude regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating about every 21,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years. The Last Glacial Period , colloquially called
12348-554: The end of the Ptolemaic period. New funerary texts appeared, including the Book of Breathing and Book of Traversing Eternity . The last use of the Book of the Dead was in the 1st century BC, though some artistic motifs drawn from it were still in use in Roman times. The Book of the Dead is made up of a number of individual texts and their accompanying illustrations. Most sub-texts begin with
12495-544: The equally large area of land under permafrost ) or deserts (33%). The pedosphere is the outermost layer of Earth's land surface and is composed of soil and subject to soil formation processes. Soil is crucial for land to be arable. Earth's total arable land is 10.7% of the land surface, with 1.3% being permanent cropland. Earth has an estimated 16.7 million km (6.4 million sq mi) of cropland and 33.5 million km (12.9 million sq mi) of pastureland. The land surface and
12642-409: The expense of the surrounding text. In the Third Intermediate Period , the Book of the Dead started to appear in hieratic script, as well as in the traditional hieroglyphics. The hieratic scrolls were a cheaper version, lacking illustration apart from a single vignette at the beginning, and were produced on smaller papyri. At the same time, many burials used additional funerary texts, for instance
12789-679: The first extensive English translation. In 1876 he published a photographic copy of the Papyrus of Nebseny. The work of E. A. Wallis Budge , Birch's successor at the British Museum, is still in wide circulation – including both his hieroglyphic editions and his English translations of the Papyrus of Ani , though the latter are now considered inaccurate and out-of-date. More recent translations in English have been published by T. G. Allen (1974) and Raymond O. Faulkner (1972). As more work has been done on
12936-638: The growth and decomposition of biomass into soil . Earth's mechanically rigid outer layer of Earth's crust and upper mantle , the lithosphere , is divided into tectonic plates . These plates are rigid segments that move relative to each other at one of three boundaries types: at convergent boundaries , two plates come together; at divergent boundaries , two plates are pulled apart; and at transform boundaries , two plates slide past one another laterally. Along these plate boundaries, earthquakes, volcanic activity , mountain-building , and oceanic trench formation can occur. The tectonic plates ride on top of
13083-404: The heat in Earth is lost through plate tectonics, by mantle upwelling associated with mid-ocean ridges . The final major mode of heat loss is through conduction through the lithosphere, the majority of which occurs under the oceans. The gravity of Earth is the acceleration that is imparted to objects due to the distribution of mass within Earth. Near Earth's surface, gravitational acceleration
13230-408: The hieroglyphs representing humans or animals were left incomplete or drawn mutilated, most likely to prevent them causing any harm to the dead pharaoh. The purpose of the Pyramid Texts was to help the dead king take his place amongst the gods , in particular to reunite him with his divine father Ra ; at this period the afterlife was seen as being in the sky, rather than the underworld described in
13377-451: The inner surfaces of coffins, though they are occasionally found on tomb walls or on papyri. The Coffin Texts were available to wealthy private individuals, vastly increasing the number of people who could expect to participate in the afterlife; a process which has been described as the "democratization of the afterlife". The Book of the Dead first developed in Thebes toward the beginning of
13524-406: The land surface is taken by the four continental landmasses , which are (in descending order): Africa-Eurasia , America (landmass) , Antarctica , and Australia (landmass) . These landmasses are further broken down and grouped into the continents . The terrain of the land surface varies greatly and consists of mountains, deserts , plains , plateaus , and other landforms . The elevation of
13671-508: The land surface varies from a low point of −418 m (−1,371 ft) at the Dead Sea , to a maximum altitude of 8,848 m (29,029 ft) at the top of Mount Everest . The mean height of land above sea level is about 797 m (2,615 ft). Land can be covered by surface water , snow, ice, artificial structures or vegetation. Most of Earth's land hosts vegetation, but considerable amounts of land are ice sheets (10%, not including
13818-399: The lithosphere, which is divided into independently moving tectonic plates. Beneath the lithosphere is the asthenosphere , a relatively low-viscosity layer on which the lithosphere rides. Important changes in crystal structure within the mantle occur at 410 and 660 km (250 and 410 mi) below the surface, spanning a transition zone that separates the upper and lower mantle. Beneath
13965-410: The loss of oxygen in the atmosphere, making current animal life impossible. Due to the increased luminosity, Earth's mean temperature may reach 100 °C (212 °F) in 1.5 billion years, and all ocean water will evaporate and be lost to space, which may trigger a runaway greenhouse effect , within an estimated 1.6 to 3 billion years. Even if the Sun were stable, a fraction of the water in
14112-456: The lowercase when it is preceded by "the", such as "the atmosphere of the earth". It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as "what on earth are you doing?" The name Terra / ˈ t ɛr ə / occasionally is used in scientific writing and especially in science fiction to distinguish humanity's inhabited planet from others, while in poetry Tellus / ˈ t ɛ l ə s / has been used to denote personification of
14259-497: The magnetosphere. During magnetic storms and substorms , charged particles can be deflected from the outer magnetosphere and especially the magnetotail, directed along field lines into Earth's ionosphere , where atmospheric atoms can be excited and ionized, causing an aurora . Earth's rotation period relative to the Sun—its mean solar day—is 86,400 seconds of mean solar time ( 86,400.0025 SI seconds ). Because Earth's solar day
14406-409: The magnetosphere; solar wind pressure compresses the day-side of the magnetosphere, to about 10 Earth radii, and extends the night-side magnetosphere into a long tail. Because the velocity of the solar wind is greater than the speed at which waves propagate through the solar wind, a supersonic bow shock precedes the day-side magnetosphere within the solar wind. Charged particles are contained within
14553-478: The magnetosphere; the plasmasphere is defined by low-energy particles that essentially follow magnetic field lines as Earth rotates. The ring current is defined by medium-energy particles that drift relative to the geomagnetic field, but with paths that are still dominated by the magnetic field, and the Van Allen radiation belts are formed by high-energy particles whose motion is essentially random, but contained in
14700-417: The mantle, an extremely low viscosity liquid outer core lies above a solid inner core . Earth's inner core may be rotating at a slightly higher angular velocity than the remainder of the planet, advancing by 0.1–0.5° per year, although both somewhat higher and much lower rates have also been proposed. The radius of the inner core is about one-fifth of that of Earth. The density increases with depth. Among
14847-600: The mantle. Due to this recycling, most of the ocean floor is less than 100 Ma old. The oldest oceanic crust is located in the Western Pacific and is estimated to be 200 Ma old. By comparison, the oldest dated continental crust is 4,030 Ma , although zircons have been found preserved as clasts within Eoarchean sedimentary rocks that give ages up to 4,400 Ma , indicating that at least some continental crust existed at that time. The seven major plates are
14994-473: The manuscript is a shorter one. The text and illustrations were produced by different scribes; there are a number of Books where the text was completed but the illustrations were left empty. The existence of the Book of the Dead was known as early as the Middle Ages , well before its contents could be understood. Since it was found in tombs, it was evidently a document of a religious nature, and this led to
15141-548: The modern oceans will descend to the mantle , due to reduced steam venting from mid-ocean ridges. The Sun will evolve to become a red giant in about 5 billion years . Models predict that the Sun will expand to roughly 1 AU (150 million km; 93 million mi), about 250 times its present radius. Earth's fate is less clear. As a red giant, the Sun will lose roughly 30% of its mass, so, without tidal effects, Earth will move to an orbit 1.7 AU (250 million km; 160 million mi) from
15288-399: The mother of Thor . Historically, "Earth" has been written in lowercase. Beginning with the use of Early Middle English , its definite sense as "the globe" was expressed as "the earth". By the era of Early Modern English , capitalization of nouns began to prevail , and the earth was also written the Earth , particularly when referenced along with other heavenly bodies. More recently,
15435-508: The name "Ani" appears at the top or bottom of a column, or immediately following a rubric introducing him as the speaker of a block of text; the name appears in a different handwriting to the rest of the manuscript, and in some places is mis-spelt or omitted entirely. The text of a New Kingdom Book of the Dead was typically written in cursive hieroglyphs , most often from left to right, but also sometimes from right to left. The hieroglyphs were in columns, which were separated by black lines –
15582-424: The name is sometimes simply given as Earth , by analogy with the names of the other planets , though "earth" and forms with "the earth" remain common. House styles now vary: Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the more common, with the capitalized form an acceptable variant. Another convention capitalizes "Earth" when appearing as a name, such as a description of the "Earth's atmosphere", but employs
15729-401: The name of something gave power over it; thus, the Book of the Dead equips its owner with the mystical names of many of the entities he would encounter in the afterlife, giving him power over them. The spells of the Book of the Dead made use of several magical techniques which can also be seen in other areas of Egyptian life. A number of spells are for magical amulets , which would protect
15876-664: The names of the Grades are similar to those of the Rosicrucian orders Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia and the German 'Orden der Gold- und Rosenkreuzer'. William Wynn Westcott , a London Deputy Coroner, member of the S.R.I.A. and one of the founders of the Golden Dawn, claimed to have received the manuscripts through Rev. A. F. A. Woodford , who was a colleague of noted Masonic scholar Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie . The papers were to have been secured by Westcott after Mackenzie’s death in 1886, among
16023-425: The newly forming Sun had only 70% of its current luminosity . By 3.5 Ga , Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind . As the molten outer layer of Earth cooled it formed the first solid crust , which is thought to have been mafic in composition. The first continental crust , which was more felsic in composition, formed by
16170-586: The ocean may have covered Earth completely. The world ocean is commonly divided into the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Antarctic or Southern Ocean , and Arctic Ocean, from largest to smallest. The ocean covers Earth's oceanic crust , with the shelf seas covering the shelves of the continental crust to a lesser extent. The oceanic crust forms large oceanic basins with features like abyssal plains , seamounts , submarine volcanoes , oceanic trenches , submarine canyons , oceanic plateaus , and
16317-648: The oceanic plates, with the Cocos Plate advancing at a rate of 75 mm/a (3.0 in/year) and the Pacific Plate moving 52–69 mm/a (2.0–2.7 in/year). At the other extreme, the slowest-moving plate is the South American Plate, progressing at a typical rate of 10.6 mm/a (0.42 in/year). Earth's interior, like that of the other terrestrial planets, is divided into layers by their chemical or physical ( rheological ) properties. The outer layer
16464-581: The orbit of maximum axial tilt toward or away from the Sun—and the equinoxes , when Earth's rotational axis is aligned with its orbital axis. In the Northern Hemisphere, winter solstice currently occurs around 21 December; summer solstice is near 21 June, spring equinox is around 20 March and autumnal equinox is about 22 or 23 September. In the Southern Hemisphere, the situation is reversed, with
16611-518: The other members of the German order supposedly objected to Sprengel's chartering of the Isis-Urania Lodge, and all further communications were cut off after she died.) The Isis-Urania Charter was written and signed only by Westcott, Mathers and William Robert Woodman . There are letters by Mackenzie that indicate the 'Society of Eight' existed, but nothing that describes what they actually taught or practised. The symbolism and philosophy contained in
16758-625: The ozone layer, life colonized Earth's surface. Among the earliest fossil evidence for life is microbial mat fossils found in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western Australia , biogenic graphite found in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks in Western Greenland , and remains of biotic material found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. The earliest direct evidence of life on Earth
16905-540: The page of the Cipher Manuscripts mentioning Anna Sprengel was almost certainly not part of the original. They argue that Westcott invented Sprengel in order to give the Golden Dawn a more plausible connection to ancient esoteric wisdom. Considerable controversy surrounds the origins of the Cipher Manuscripts . Westcott claimed Sprengel was a German Adept of the 'Gold- und Rosenkreuzer' Order who wrote letters to Westcott and Mathers granting them permission to establish
17052-469: The partial melting of this mafic crust. The presence of grains of the mineral zircon of Hadean age in Eoarchean sedimentary rocks suggests that at least some felsic crust existed as early as 4.4 Ga , only 140 Ma after Earth's formation. There are two main models of how this initial small volume of continental crust evolved to reach its current abundance: (1) a relatively steady growth up to
17199-501: The past 66 Mys , and several million years ago, an African ape species gained the ability to stand upright. This facilitated tool use and encouraged communication that provided the nutrition and stimulation needed for a larger brain, which led to the evolution of humans . The development of agriculture , and then civilization , led to humans having an influence on Earth and the nature and quantity of other life forms that continues to this day. Earth's expected long-term future
17346-476: The person could be variously preserved, remembered, and satiated, then the dead person would live on in the form of an akh . An akh was a blessed spirit with magical powers who would dwell among the gods. The nature of the afterlife which the dead people enjoyed is difficult to define, because of the differing traditions within Ancient Egyptian religion. In the Book of the Dead , the dead were taken into
17493-405: The physical body into sah , an idealized form with divine aspects; the Book of the Dead contained spells aimed at preserving the body of the deceased, which may have been recited during the process of mummification. The heart, which was regarded as the aspect of being which included intelligence and memory, was also protected with spells, and in case anything happened to the physical heart, it
17640-478: The planet's environment . Humanity's current impact on Earth's climate and biosphere is unsustainable , threatening the livelihood of humans and many other forms of life, and causing widespread extinctions . The Modern English word Earth developed, via Middle English , from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe . It has cognates in every Germanic language , and their ancestral root has been reconstructed as * erþō . In its earliest attestation,
17787-400: The planet. The water vapor acts as a greenhouse gas and, together with other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), creates the conditions for both liquid surface water and water vapor to persist via the capturing of energy from the Sun's light . This process maintains the current average surface temperature of 14.76 °C (58.57 °F), at which water
17934-421: The polar Northern and Southern hemispheres; or by longitude into the continental Eastern and Western hemispheres. Most of Earth's surface is ocean water: 70.8% or 361 million km (139 million sq mi). This vast pool of salty water is often called the world ocean , and makes Earth with its dynamic hydrosphere a water world or ocean world . Indeed, in Earth's early history
18081-491: The presence of the god Osiris , who was confined to the subterranean Duat . There are also spells to enable the ba or akh of the dead to join Ra as he travelled the sky in his sun-barque, and help him fight off Apep . As well as joining the Gods, the Book of the Dead also depicts the dead living on in the ' Field of Reeds ', a paradisiac likeness of the real world. The Field of Reeds
18228-490: The present day, which is supported by the radiometric dating of continental crust globally and (2) an initial rapid growth in the volume of continental crust during the Archean , forming the bulk of the continental crust that now exists, which is supported by isotopic evidence from hafnium in zircons and neodymium in sedimentary rocks. The two models and the data that support them can be reconciled by large-scale recycling of
18375-423: The price of a Book of the Dead scroll as one deben of silver, perhaps half the annual pay of a laborer. Papyrus itself was evidently costly, as there are many instances of its re-use in everyday documents, creating palimpsests . In one case, a Book of the Dead was written on second-hand papyrus. Most owners of the Book of the Dead were evidently part of the social elite; they were initially reserved for
18522-555: The proposed origins of the Cipher Manuscripts . Questions about the authenticity of the Manuscripts and the authority of the Isis-Urania Charter contributed to the first great schism of the Golden Dawn Order in 1900. In 1901, with the dissensions in the Golden Dawn, the poet W. B. Yeats , a member of the Order, privately published a pamphlet titled Is the Order of R.R. et A. C. to Remain a Magical Order? The true origins of
18669-493: The rates of mantle convection and plate tectonics, and allowing the production of uncommon igneous rocks such as komatiites that are rarely formed today. The mean heat loss from Earth is 87 mW m , for a global heat loss of 4.42 × 10 W . A portion of the core's thermal energy is transported toward the crust by mantle plumes , a form of convection consisting of upwellings of higher-temperature rock. These plumes can produce hotspots and flood basalts . More of
18816-555: The rituals and the knowledge lectures of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were based. The actual material itself described in the Manuscript is of known origins. Hermeticism, Alchemy, Qabalah, Astrology and Tarot were certainly not unknown to 19th century scholars of the Magical arts; the Cipher is a compendium of previously known Magical traditions. The basic structure of the rituals and
18963-497: The royal family, but later papyri are found in the tombs of scribes, priests and officials. Most owners were men, and generally the vignettes included the owner's wife as well. Towards the beginning of the history of the Book of the Dead , there are roughly ten copies belonging to men for every one for a woman. However, during the Third Intermediate Period, two were for women for every one for a man; and women owned roughly
19110-453: The same thing. The magical power of words extended to the written word. Hieroglyphic script was held to have been invented by the god Thoth , and the hieroglyphs themselves were powerful. Written words conveyed the full force of a spell. This was even true when the text was abbreviated or omitted, as often occurred in later Book of the Dead scrolls, particularly if the accompanying images were present. The Egyptians also believed that knowing
19257-515: The shape of an ellipsoid , bulging at its Equator ; its diameter is 43 kilometres (27 mi) longer there than at its poles . Earth's shape also has local topographic variations; the largest local variations, like the Mariana Trench (10,925 metres or 35,843 feet below local sea level), shortens Earth's average radius by 0.17% and Mount Everest (8,848 metres or 29,029 feet above local sea level) lengthens it by 0.14%. Since Earth's surface
19404-509: The summer and winter solstices exchanged and the spring and autumnal equinox dates swapped. Book of the Dead The Book of the Dead is the name given to an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC. "Book" is the closest term to describe the loose collection of texts consisting of
19551-400: The text was in black, with red ink used for the titles of spells, opening and closing sections of spells, the instructions to perform spells correctly in rituals, and also for the names of dangerous creatures such as the demon Apep . The black ink used was based on carbon , and the red ink on ochre , in both cases mixed with water. The style and nature of the vignettes used to illustrate
19698-442: The text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw , is translated as Spells of Coming Forth by Day . The Book of the Dead , which was placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased, was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts , which were painted onto objects, not written on papyrus. Some of the spells included in the book were drawn from these older works and date to
19845-467: The text. One final page transcribes into French and Latin . The Ciphers contain the outlines of a series of graded rituals and the syllabus for a course of instruction in Qabalah and Hermetic magic, including Astrology , occult tarot , Geomancy and Alchemy . It also contains several diagrams and crude drawings of various ritual implements. The Cipher Manuscripts are the original source upon which
19992-456: The widespread but mistaken belief that the Book of the Dead was the equivalent of a Bible or Qur'an . In 1842 Karl Richard Lepsius published a translation of a manuscript dated to the Ptolemaic era and coined the name " Book of The Dead" ( das Todtenbuch ). He also introduced the spell numbering system which is still in use, identifying 165 different spells. Lepsius promoted the idea of
20139-456: The word eorðe was used to translate the many senses of Latin terra and Greek γῆ gē : the ground, its soil , dry land, the human world, the surface of the world (including the sea), and the globe itself. As with Roman Terra /Tellūs and Greek Gaia , Earth may have been a personified goddess in Germanic paganism : late Norse mythology included Jörð ("Earth"), a giantess often given as
20286-457: The word r(ꜣ) , which can mean "mouth", "speech", "spell", "utterance", "incantation", or "chapter of a book". This ambiguity reflects the similarity in Egyptian thought between ritual speech and magical power. In the context of the Book of the Dead , it is typically translated as either chapter or spell . In this article, the word spell is used. At present, some 192 spells are known, though no single manuscript contains them all. They served
20433-598: The year. This causes the seasonal change in climate, with summer in the Northern Hemisphere occurring when the Tropic of Cancer is facing the Sun, and in the Southern Hemisphere when the Tropic of Capricorn faces the Sun. In each instance, winter occurs simultaneously in the opposite hemisphere. During the summer, the day lasts longer, and the Sun climbs higher in the sky. In winter, the climate becomes cooler and
20580-442: Was a risk that the deceased's heart would bear witness, owning up to sins committed in life; Spell 30B guarded against this eventuality. If the scales balanced, this meant the deceased had led a good life. Anubis would take them to Osiris and they would find their place in the afterlife, becoming maa-kheru , meaning "vindicated" or "true of voice". If the heart was out of balance with Maat, then another fearsome beast called Ammit ,
20727-496: Was as legitimate an activity as praying to the gods, even when the magic was aimed at controlling the gods themselves. Indeed, there was little distinction for the Ancient Egyptians between magical and religious practice. The concept of magic ( heka ) was also intimately linked with the spoken and written word. The act of speaking a ritual formula was an act of creation; there is a sense in which action and speech were one and
20874-437: Was common to bury jeweled heart scarabs with a body to provide a replacement. The ka , or life-force, remained in the tomb with the dead body, and required sustenance from offerings of food, water and incense. In case priests or relatives failed to provide these offerings, Spell 105 ensured the ka was satisfied. The name of the dead person, which constituted their individuality and was required for their continued existence,
21021-549: Was discovered by the Prince Hordjedef in the reign of King Menkaure , many hundreds of years before it is attested in the archaeological record. By the 17th Dynasty , the Book of the Dead had become widespread not only for members of the royal family, but courtiers and other officials as well. At this stage, the spells were typically inscribed on linen shrouds wrapped around the dead, though occasionally they are found written on coffins or on papyrus. The New Kingdom saw
21168-428: Was led by the god Anubis into the presence of Osiris. There, the dead person swore that he had not committed any sin from a list of 42 sins , reciting a text known as the "Negative Confession". Then the dead person's heart was weighed on a pair of scales, against the goddess Maat , who embodied truth and justice. Maat was often represented by an ostrich feather, the hieroglyphic sign for her name. At this point, there
21315-449: Was taken to frame the text within margins, and to avoid writing on the joints between sheets. The words peret em heru , or coming forth by day sometimes appear on the reverse of the outer margin, perhaps acting as a label. Books were often prefabricated in funerary workshops, with spaces being left for the name of the deceased to be written in later. For instance, in the Papyrus of Ani ,
21462-548: Was to correctly address each of the forty-two Assessors of Maat by name, while reciting the sins they did not commit during their lifetime. This process allowed the dead to demonstrate that they knew each of the judges' names or Ren and established that they were pure, and free of sin. If all the obstacles of the Duat could be negotiated, the deceased would be judged in the " Weighing of the Heart " ritual, depicted in Spell 125. The deceased
21609-441: Was written in many places throughout the Book , and spell 25 ensured the deceased would remember their own name. The ba was a free-ranging spirit aspect of the deceased. It was the ba , depicted as a human-headed bird, which could "go forth by day" from the tomb into the world; spells 61 and 89 acted to preserve it. Finally, the shut , or shadow of the deceased, was preserved by spells 91, 92 and 188. If all these aspects of
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