Four thousand years ago, a revolutionary promise spread across Egypt: the journey through death was no longer the privilege of pharaohs alone. Painted in sacred script on the inside of wooden coffins, the Coffin Texts are the first great scripture of hope for ordinary people, a guidebook for the soul crossing the mystery of the hereafter. Here are the ancient spells and hymns that carried the dead through the Duat: prayers for bread and cool water in the next world, spells to fly as a falcon or shine as a star, declarations of innocence before the judges, and the earliest map of the unseen world, the Book of Two Ways. This edition renders Middle Kingdom Egyptian into clear, inviting present-day English while staying faithful to the original beauty, strangeness, and reverence, so that modern readers may walk beside the ancient traveler as equals. Part of The World Scriptures Library.