Coffin Texts

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The Coffin Texts, which superseded the Pyramid Texts as magical funerary spells at the end of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, are principally a Middle Kingdom phenomenon, although examples have been found as early as the late Old Kingdom. They democratized the afterlife by removing the royal exclusivity of the Pyramid Texts.

As the modern name of this collection of some 1,185 spells implies, the texts are mostly found on Middle Kingdom coffins. However they are sometimes inscribed on tomb walls, stelae, canopic chests, papyri and even mummy masks.

Coffin Texts were used on coffins of both royalty and those common people who could afford them. The texts were usually painted in columns of cursive hieroglyphs inside the coffin. Many of these texts were derived from the earlier Pyramid Texts but others were original compositions and some were later developed into chapters in the New Kingdom Book of the Dead.

The Coffin Texts were intended to provide a guarantee of survival in the afterworld, and included such titles as "Spell for not dying a second death". They combine ritual actions intended as protection, expressions of aspiration for a blessed existence after death and of the transformations and transmigrations of the ba and akh and so on. In addition there are descriptions of the land of the dead, its landscape and inhabitants. These include the Sekhet Hotep (Field of offerings or peace), the paths of Rostau and the abode of Osiris. In some cases these descriptions were supplemented by illustrations and maps of the underworld called "The Book of the Two Ways."

[edit] The Book of the Two Ways

Coffins from the Middle Egypt necropolis of el-Bersheh contain unique graphical representations of the realm of the afterlife. On the base of the coffins is found the Book of the Two Ways which gives a complete description of the journey from this life to the next. The name derives from part of the 'book' which shows two paths, that of the sky and the earth, separated by a lake of fire, which leads to Rostau and the abode of Osiris.

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

Raymond O. Faulkner, "The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts", ISBN 0-85668-754-5, 3 vols., 1972-78.
The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, Erik Hornung, ISBN 0-8014-8515-0