Papyrus Fragment II: The Opening of the Mouth
The second of three gilded papyrus fragments from the Book of the Dead of Neferhotep, this piece depicts the Opening of the Mouth ceremony — the ritual that restored the deceased's senses for the afterlife. Painted by the scribe Amenemhat at Thebes in 1274 BC, the fragment shows a sem-priest performing the ritual upon Neferhotep's mummy with a ceremonial adze, whilst mourning women weep at the tomb entrance.
Description
This fragment, measuring approximately forty centimetres in width and twenty-eight in height, preserves a vignette depicting the Opening of the Mouth ceremony from the same Book of the Dead scroll as Fragment I. The scene shows a sem-priest, identifiable by his leopard-skin robe, touching the mouth and eyes of Neferhotep's upright mummy with a ceremonial adze — the ritual act believed to restore the deceased's ability to see, hear, breathe, and speak in the afterlife.
To the left, two mourning women (conventionally representing the goddesses Isis and Nephthys) kneel with arms raised in the traditional gesture of lamentation. The tomb entrance is depicted behind the mummy, its decorated facade rendered in careful architectural detail. Hieroglyphic spells from Chapter 23 of the Book of the Dead accompany the scene, written in the same precise hieratic hand as Fragment I. The gold-washed papyrus background matches the other fragments, confirming their origin from a single scroll.
The fragment is displayed in an ornate gilt frame on the eastern wall of the Blue Room, adjacent to Fragment I.
Historical Setting
Produced alongside Fragment I on the 2nd of Thoth, year 5 of the reign of Ramesses II (1274 BC), at the scriptorial workshop of the Temple of Amun at Karnak. The scribe-illustrator Amenemhat, son of Nakht, executed this section of the scroll as part of the complete Book of the Dead commissioned for the burial of Neferhotep, Overseer of the Granaries of Amun.
The Opening of the Mouth was among the most important funerary rituals in the Egyptian religious tradition, performed upon the mummy at the entrance to the tomb before final interment. Its inclusion in the Book of the Dead ensured that the ritual would be perpetually re-enacted in the afterlife, guaranteeing the deceased's continued sensory existence for eternity.
Provenance
Separated from the parent scroll at the same time as Fragment I, this section followed a slightly different path through the antiquities market. It was recorded in a private collection in Damascus in approximately 1410, passed through Ottoman hands to a Venetian trader in 1583, and appeared in a London dealer's catalogue in 1798. It was acquired through William Jeffries Sr.'s intermediaries in 1819, reunited with Fragment I at Jeffries Manor — the first time the two sections had been in the same location since their separation from the original scroll centuries earlier.
