Opening of the Mouth Ritual
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Book of Opening the Mouth 4:2
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Exodus 28:2
Book of Opening the Mouth 5:5
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Genesis 3:5
Book of Opening the Mouth 10:7
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Genesis 2:15
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Summary
Date: c. 1290-1279 BCE
The Book of Opening the Mouth is an Egyptian ritual performed on a statue or a mummy so that it could see, speak, eat and receive offerings. Priests purified and censed it, touched its mouth and eyes with an adze and other instruments, presented the heart and foreleg of a slaughtered bull, and then clothed, anointed and armed it. In the last ceremony nine bearers carried the statue into its shrine, whose opened doors are called “the doors of heaven,” and the statue is afterwards called a god. Its formulas go back to the Pyramid Texts and were still copied in the Roman period, and this text follows the version in the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings. The English text is based on Wallis Budge's 1909 translation.
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