More inside views on the Book of the Dead exhibition

British Museum (John Taylor)

It’s now just over one month since the Book of the Dead exhibition opened to the public – the culmination of a number of years work. So it’s greatly satisfying to see it full of people at last.

We’ve always been aware that here at the British Museum we have one of the best collections of books of the dead in the world, but usually we can only display a small proportion of them. So we’ve always wanted to find an opportunity to display a larger selection of them and also explain what they are. If you look at the Egyptian galleries here you will see references to Books of the Dead, you’ll see parts of them, but we have never been able to focus so closely on them and really explain how they work.

Seeing the objects in place is really exciting. You think you can get a sense of what it will look like but when you see the installation in the space for the first time it can be a real revelation, especially as plans change so much over the course of the development.

One of the problems we faced was that there are so many stories you can tell about the books of the dead, but you can’t explain them all.