A long Egyptian demotic inscribed mummy linen fragment<br><em>Late Period, ca. 664-332 BCE</em>

This long linen fragment strip preserves large demotic mortuary text written with rapid brush strokes from right to left from the Book of the Dead.The Book of the Dead is the modern term for a collection of about two hundred ancient Egyptian mortuary texts made up of spells or magic formulas, which were placed in tombs and believed to protect and aid the deceased in the hereafter. Many copies of the book have been found in Egyptian tombs, but none contains all of the approximately 200 known chapters. In 1842 Richard Lepsius assigned numbers 1-165 in his edition of the papyrus of Iufankh (Egyptian Museum Turin). Further numbers were subsequently added by other scholars. The funerary texts are written in hieroglyphs or in hieratic (cursive hieroglyphs) as in this example.Condition:  The strip is intact and in excellent condition overall.Dimensions: Overall length: 37 inches (94 cm), Width: 2 inches (5.08 cm)Provenance: Victor Pafundi (1949 - 2018) private collection, Florida, assembled between 1970s - 2000s.