The Egyptian Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BCE) to around 50 BCE. It is a collection of texts intended to assist a dead person's journey through the underworld, and into the afterlife, which were written by many Egyptian priests over a period of about 1000 years. The Book of the Dead was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts, which were painted onto objects.