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Gosts and seances

We don’t find many stories of ghosts in the Egyptian papyri. We know only very few of them as the one that was found in a tomb. It was written in a papyrus by a man who complained about the fact that his late wife, who had died three years before, instead of leading a good and peaceful life in the next world, behaved in a very censurable way and made him run into all sorts of trouble. The poor man gave a list of all his merits toward her and described the generous way in which, for all the time of their marriage, he had always treated her. Thus he attested that the way in which she behaved now was very shameful and that he could not stand her persecution anymore. Of course he wanted that his complaints could reach her and, for succeeding. he imagined that the best way to succeed was materially to contact all the doubles, souls and spirits of his late spouse, and through them ask her to let him be. To communicate with the next word has never been an easy thing, and it was the same also in ancient Egypt. To succeed the unhappy and tormented man didn’t find anything better to do than to write all his complaints on a nice papyrus, go to the tomb and, when he was there, after having declared at the top of his voice what he had to say to his late wife, he tied the papyrus to his wife’s statue. Thus he was sure that the double, the soul and whatever else lived in it would read it, understand the case and will convey it to the concerned party. The archaeologists who found the papyrus read and translated it, but as the husband did not leave other documents we don’t know what was the results of his enterprise, therefore that’s all that we know about it and we can only hope the better for him.



BIBLIOGRAPHY
E.A. WALLIS BUDGE, Egyptian Magi, Bury St.Edmunds, Suffolk, 1975, first published in 1899, pp. 217-218
LEEMANS, Monuments égyptyens, Partie II, pp; 183-184 Leyden, 1846;
MASPERO, Journal Asiatique, Sér. 7, Tom. 15, maggio-giugno, 1880, pp. 365-420, for the translation of the Yerogliph