An Ethiopian Book of the Dead

Of all the surviving magical works written in Ethiopic and Amharic, this is the most curious and interesting. Although it purprts to be Christian, it in fact owes much to the Jewish, Egyptian, and "magical" traditions of the region. The book's foundation is a much abbreviated and more succinct form of the "Egyptian Book of the Dead," upon which strong elements of Christianity, Gnosticism, and Hebraic apocrypha have been laid, most likely from early Greek or Syriac translations and original Coptic texts. The "bandlet" to which the original refers is a strip of linen or parchment as long as the body of the person for whom it was prepared, on which were written the secret names of God, meant to ensure protection in the next world.