Entering the Cultic Hall of mȝʿty : Reinterpreting BD 125

Instead of a paramount Judgement of the Dead that results in an extratextually assumed admittance of the deceased into an afterlife, I propose an interpretation in which BD 125 is analysed as a cultic qualification of the dead, leading solely to the deceased’s admittance into the intratextually prominent hall of mȝʿty . This reading is compatible with the content and structural integrity of the text as well as with the cultic practices and norms of the ritual specialist(s) who authored it, and thus arguably more plausible. It also diverges from the long-standing tradition of European interpretation predating the discovery of the spell, in which ancient Egyptians are portrayed as traditional eschatologists. Consequently, the reinterpretation further reinforces a growing dissatisfaction with the conventional ‘afterlife hypothesis’, arguing instead that the spell was used within an immediate ritual context rather than for securing a personal afterlife.