Totenpass

Totenpass (plural Totenpässe) is a German term sometimes used for inscribed tablets or metal leaves found in burials primarily of those presumed to be initiates into Orphic, Dionysiac, and some ancient Egyptian and Semitic religions. The term may be understood in English as a “passport for the dead.” The so-called Orphic gold tablets are perhaps the best-known example.

Totenpässe are placed on or near the body as a phylactery, or rolled and inserted into a capsule often worn around the neck as an amulet. The inscription instructs the initiate on how to navigate the afterlife, including directions for avoiding hazards in the landscape of the dead and formulaic responses to the underworld judges.

The Getty Museum owns an outstanding example of a 4th-century B.C. Orphic prayer sheet from Thessaly, a gold-leaf rectangle measuring about 1 by 1½ inches (2.54 by 3.81 cm). The burial site of a woman also in Thessaly and dating to the late 4th century B.C. yielded a pair of Totenpässe in the form of lamellae (Latin, “thin metal sheets,” singular lamella). Although the term “leaf” to describe metal foil is a modern metaphorical usage, these lamellae were in this case cut in the shape of cordate leaves probably meant to represent ivy; most Totenpässe of this type are rectangular. The Greek lettering is not inscribed in regular lines as it is on the rectangular tablets, but rambles to fit the shape. The leaves are paper-thin and small, one measuring 40 by 31 mm (about 1½ by 1¼ inches) and the other 35 by 30 mm. They had been arranged symmetrically on the woman's chest, with her lips sealed by a gold danake, or "Charon's obol," the coin that pays the ferryman of the dead for passage; this particular coin depicted the head of a Gorgon. Also placed in the tomb was a terracotta figurine of a maenad, one of the ecstatic women in the retinue of Dionysus.

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