Inspired by the enormous death toll brought on by Covid-19, I began reading and looking at the images of The Egyptian Book of the Dead, a funerary text that started to be used around 50 BCE and was originally written on papyrus. It's a collection of spells to help the deceased navigate the afterlife. The book served as a kind of cheat-sheet that insured a smooth transition to paradise, telling the deceased where to go, how to address certain gods and how to behave in the land of the dead. Historian Margaret Bunson explains that the book "was to instruct the deceased on how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife by enabling them to assume the form of several mythical creatures and to give them the passwords necessary for admittance to certain stages of the underworld.”
Anubis, who guides the deceased through the afterlife
While each book shared certain rules and advice, no two books were alike. Before sitting down to write, the scribe would inquire about the life of the deceased, their strengths and weaknesses, to tailor the text accordingly.
Naturally, what appealed to this animal quilter was that the Book of the Dead is full of animals who play important roles. Anubis, the jackal god, for example, guided the dead to the Hall of Truth. After a series of confessions, Anubis consulted with other gods and the heart of the deceased was weighed against the feather of truth. Only souls whose hearts were lighter than the feather were allowed to enter paradise. If the heart was heavier, it was thrown onto the floor and was devoured by the monster goddess Ammit, who had the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion and the hindquarters of a hippo. (If this is the last thing I see before I go, I promise I won’t complain!)
Anubis, the jackal god is weighing the heart. Ammit, part crocodile, part lion and hippo is waiting to devour the heart, in case it isn’t lighter than a feather.
The Book of the Dead served as a loose inspiration for the coffin quilt; it also features some animals that are not part of the book, such as rabbits. How could I, as a life-long rabbit enthusiast, make a coffin without them? I did include parts of the script of the Papyrus of Ani on it, a version of the Book of the Dead written in roughly 1250 BCE. The center front features hieroglyphs from chapter 30 B, and the coffin’s sides a translated excerpt from the same chapter. This excerpt describes the “weighing of the heart” and offers a spell to be uttered by the deceased to prevent her heart from speaking out against her:
Cat mummy and rabbit next to excerpted hieroglyphs from The Book of the Dead.
“O my heart which I had from my mother! O my heart of different ages! Do not stand up as a witness against me, do not be opposed to me in the tribunal, do not be hostile to me in the presence of...”
Befitting someone who has a pet cemetery in her backyard--over the years, we must have buried at least half a dozen rabbits behind our house, along with a much-loved cat--the back of the quilt features a cat mummy with a scarab appliquéd on its chest. This motif, too, is taken from Egyptian mythology. Scarabs carved from blue stone were sometimes hung around the necks or sewn onto the chests of the deceased. The role of the ghostly scarab was to whisper the correct answer into the ear of the supplicant, who could then answer the gods correctly.
The quilt from the side with an excerpt from chapter 30B of The Book of the Dead. Above it (on top of the quilt), one of two baboons. The baboon was considered a deity of the underworld who devoured the souls of the unrighteous.
While working on this quilt I thought a lot about the hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans that had been lost to Covid-19 and of the thousands more who would die in the months to come. What hurt me the most was the fact that most of them died alone in hospitals and nursing homes with no one to emotionally guide them, no dog or cat to cuddle up to, no loved one to hold them. A sleeping bag, hand-appliqued with the animals I love, I imagined, would provide comfort and warmth and dreams of good (animal) company in the last hours of life. I also thought about how I would be judged for my sins and my privilege that spared me from Covid-19 as I indulged in the luxury of sitting at home quilting, surrounded by my sweet animals and husband.
The coffin quilt fits me like a glove. Filled with wool and embroidered with Finca Presencia perle cotton, the quilt is made from recycled shirts and dresses from friends, neighbors and colleagues to allow for a “green burial.” It’s about 5 feet and 5 inches long, 17 inches wide and 4 inches deep.