Book of the Dead of Petamunnebnesetawy

Under the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt, the temple of Amun at Karnak kept its priests and its ancient rites, and those priests still went to the grave with a Book of the Dead. This roll was made for one of them. Petamunnebnesetawy was a god's father, a priestly rank, and a priest of Amun at Karnak, and his name says as much. It means the one whom Amun, lord of the thrones of the Two Lands, has given, and lord of the thrones of the Two Lands was the title of Amun at Karnak. His mother's name, Tanetamunnebnesetawy, repeats the same title, and as often in papyri of this time he is identified through her.

The roll is more than 11 metres long and written in hieratic, the cursive form of hieroglyphs. A study of it has shown that several scribes shared the work, each recognisable by his handwriting and his way of laying out the text. A strip of small pictures runs along the top, beginning with his coffin drawn on a sledge to the tomb, and further along a full-height scene places him in the hall of judgement before Osiris, waiting for his heart to be weighed. The museum dates the roll no more closely than the Ptolemaic period, and it came to Turin in 1824 with the collection of Bernardino Drovetti, the French consul in Egypt.