Reddit reviews Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Featuring Integrated Text and Full-Color Images

Books which may interest, especially for beginners (The first three are highly recommended)

Magic in Ancient Egypt: Revised Edition

Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World

Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred

Following the Sun: A Practical Guide to Egyptian Religion, Revised Edition

Circle Of The Sun: Rites And Celebrations For Egyptian Pagans And Kemetics

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Featuring Integrated Text and Full-Color Images (This book isn't much of a "for beginners"-- it's just a translated funeral text. Still a great read for Kemeticists, though.)

The Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook (Just a contemporary prayerbook which may interest)

The most recent translations aren't going to be free and available online. I'd suggest going to your library or ordering a copy via Amazon. This is an excellent version, but there are less expensive, earlier editions available as well.

Hey there!

Well, I own a copy of the earlier edition of this book. You're in luck, this new edition is very recent. It's paperback, however, and I'm not entirely sure if there's a hardcover version. It's the Faulkner translation. I'm sure there are more recent translations, but Faulkner's, as you probably know since you named him in your title, is very respected. The plates are stunning, and for that alone it's worth it. Some pages are even fold-in in order to not compromise the scenes. The book is rather tall, so you can see detail, and the translations are under the pertinent plates.

I did set the bar quite high when looking for a Book of Coming Forth by Day and this version is one I quite like. I'm yet to hear negative feedback about it, although I'd appreciate it. The only downside for me so far is that it's paperback.

Budge's work was decent for its time, but knowledge of ancient Egyptian vocabulary and grammar has advanced considerably since the 1800s. In particular, Polotsky's discoveries in the mid-20th century dramatically changed how scholars analyze the Egyptian verbal system. It's extremely irritating to see Budge's works still in publication since all of them have long since been replaced by more up to date works.

An additional problem is that Budge uses his own peculiar version of vocalization for transliterations rather than the standard system used by Egyptologists today, which makes it very difficult for a non-Egyptologist to look up words from his translation in an Egyptian dictionary like Faulkner's or the TLA.

As an example, see page 130 of Budge's translation. Budge translates an adjectival sentence as follows:

>neferiu uben-k em xut se-het'-k taiu em satu-k

>"Doubly beautiful [is] thy rising in the horizon, thou shinest upon the two lands with thy beams."

Here Budge has misinterpreted the adjective nfrwy. It's true that -wy is commonly the dual form (hence Budge's "doubly"), but that is used only for dual nouns, typically body parts such as legs and eyes, and adjectives referring to dual nouns. It makes no sense as a dual in this adjectival sentence. Rather, it is the exclamatory ending -wy used for predicate adjectives ("how XXX is Y!"). Budge also rather awkwardly begins a new independent clause with "thou shinest" when it fact it should be linked to the previous clause; Egyptian independent clauses typically require the use of an introductory particle, which is not present here.

Egyptologists today would translate the sentence as follows:

>nfrwy wbn=k m Axt sHD=k tAwy m stwt=k

>"How beautiful is your shining in the horizon while you brighten the Two Lands with your rays (lit. 'shootings')!"

The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day translated by Faulkner and Goelet is a much more recent and reliable translation of the Papyrus of Ani, the version on which Budge's translation is based.

here bro

You planning going entering Duat a little early? Here ya go

• The best Conspiracy books -- wishlist of ~100 books
  
• Temple of Man -- another edition
  
• Fingerprints of the Gods
  
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day: The Complete Papyrus of Ani Featuring Integrated Text and Full-Color Images
  
• Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics
  

I just pre-ordered a new book;

http://www.amazon.com/Egyptian-Book-Dead-Integrated-Full-Color/dp/1452144389/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421361562&sr=1-2&keywords=book+of+going+forth+by+day

It is a new version of the same book, which you could likely get at less cost. Has the whole papyrus published above the English. Pretty good. Fun to read, and fun to use if you are also learning M. E. grammar.

Edit: Searching for information on the "Book of Going/Coming Forth by Day" will get you better results.

You've probably heard of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, known to the Egyptians as the Book of Going Forth by Day, said to have been written by Thoth, God of Wisdom, "from his own fingers". This is the most important surviving text on Egyptian Magic, a complete grimoire of spells, prayers, hymns and incantations used by the ancient priesthood to connect with the Divine and prepare the soul to travel the Neterworld.

The text itself has enormous historic and spiritual value, but it doesn't exactly explain how a modern magician is supposed to use it. To provide context: try the works of Normandi Ellis, who provides an initiated translation of the text in Awakening Osiris, an explanation of the mythical and magical context of the Egyptian gods (Neteru) in Imagining the World into Existence, and the magical initiatory system of the ancients in The Union of Isis and Thoth.

Thelemic Magick has a connection to Egyptian Magic via the transmission of the Book of the Law. This is the basis for much of the the magical system developed by Aleister Crowley in the A∴A∴ and OTO. Again, this holy book of Thelema is complex and does not provide a useful guide to the beginner on the practice of Thelemic Magick. A book like Maat Magick offers a nice practical system for working with the Egyptian Neteru in the spirit of Thelema.