Coffin Texts

Coffin Texts is the modern name of religious texts that have been most often placed on the insides of coffins upstanding people in the Egyptian Middle Kingdom. Many of these texts have evolved from the Pyramid Texts, and have now also appear on the coffin interior walls. The classification of pyramid and coffin texts is a modern, while the Egyptians rather well distinguished the functions of individual texts. A special form of the joints are inscriptions that were placed in the joints of the coffin walls.

Coffin Texts have different functions. This is partly to rituals that were spoken in the mummification and funeral. Some texts take care of the protection of mummies contain directions of the underworld.

The first longer religious texts appear already at the end of the Old Kingdom coffins, but are particularly popular in the Middle Kingdom. At the end of the 12th Dynasty, the custom ceases to label coffins with long texts, is then used in the 13th dynasty, even if from this phase much less texts have survived. In the New Kingdom Book of the Dead comes to that provided many sayings from the Coffin Texts. Individual messages were still being used in the late period.

Example

Saying No 764: