Sacred Texts & Writing
- Amduat:
Has been described as a composite, made up of "compilations and excerpts from older funerary sources and mortuary formulas."
is an important Ancient Egyptian funerary text of the New Kingdom. Like many funerary texts, it was written on the inside of the tomb for reference by the deceased. It describes the journey of the sun god Ra through the six caverns of the underworld, focusing on rewards and punishments in the afterlife.
is an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BCE) to around 50 BCE. The original Egyptian name for the text, transliterated rw nw prt m hrw is translated as "Book of Coming Forth by Day". Another translation would be "Book of emerging forth into the Light". The text consists of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife.
is an Ancient Egyptian funerary text that has been called many names such as “The Creation of the Sun Disk” and the “Book of Aker. ” The Book primarily appears on the tombs of Merneptah, Twosret, Ramesses III, Ramesses VI, and Ramesses VII and serves as a counterpart to the Book of Caverns. The central figures in the story are Osiris, Reand ba, while the overarching plot is the journey the sun takes through the earth god, Aker.
is an Ancient Egyptian funerary text dating from the New Kingdom. It narrates the passage of a newly deceased soul into the next world, corresponding to the journey of the sun though the underworld during the hours of the night. The soul is required to pass though a series of 'gates' at different stages in the journey. Each gate is associated with a different goddess, and requires that the deceased recognise the particular character of that deity. The text implies that some people will pass through unharmed, but that others will suffer torment in a lake of fire.
The literature that make up the Ancient Egyptian Funerary Texts are a collection of religious documents that were used in Ancient Egypt, usually to help the spirit of the concerned person to be preserved in the afterlife. They evolved over time, beginning with the Pyramid Texts in the Old Kingdom, which were the concern only of royal burials, through the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, the several books in the New Kingdom and later times.