The British Museum acquired the Papyrus of Ani in 1888.
The papyrus is one of the best-known surviving copies of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It was created for Ani, a Theban royal scribe, around 1250 BCE during Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, part of the New Kingdom. Its hieroglyphic text is accompanied by richly colored scenes showing rituals and episodes from the afterlife.
The scroll was discovered at Luxor in 1888 and entered the British Museum through Ernest A. Wallis Budge. The museum’s collection records identify the acquisition year as 1888, even though the papyrus is divided into many separately catalogued frames and object records.
The date is sometimes confused with the papyrus’s much earlier creation date. Ani’s manuscript is roughly 3,000 years older than its acquisition by the museum. It is also often called the “Book of the Dead of Ani”; the ancient Egyptian title for this type of work was closer to “Spells of Coming Forth by Day.”