The Book of Traversing Eternity is an
ancient Egyptian funerary text
The literature that makes up the ancient Egyptian funerary texts is 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, ...
used primarily in the
Roman period of
Egyptian history
The history of Egypt has been long and wealthy, due to the flow of the Nile River with its fertile banks and delta, as well as the accomplishments of Egypt's native inhabitants and outside influence. Much of Egypt's ancient history was a myste ...
(30 BC – AD 390). The earliest known copies date to the preceding
Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BC), making it most likely that the book was composed at that time.
[Hornung, Erik (1999). ''The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife'', Cornell University Press, pp. 151–152]
The book describes the
deceased soul as visiting
temples
A temple (from the Latin ) is a building reserved for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. Religions which erect temples include Christianity (whose temples are typically called churches), Hinduism (whose temples ...
in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
and participating in the cycle of periodic religious rituals, particularly those related to the funerary god
Osiris
Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wsjr'', cop, ⲟⲩⲥⲓⲣⲉ , ; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎𐤓, romanized: ʾsr) is the god of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He wa ...
. Some scholars have seen the book's content as a description of the
Duat
The Duat ( egy, dwꜣt, Egyptological pronunciation "do-aht", cop, ⲧⲏ, also appearing as ''Tuat'', ''Tuaut'' or ''Akert'', ''Amenthes'', ''Amenti'', or ''Neter-khertet'') is the realm of the dead in ancient Egyptian mythology. It has been ...
, similar to the "underworld books" from the
New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC). Others, such as
Jan Assmann
Jan Assmann (born Johann Christoph Assmann; born 7 July 1938) is a German Egyptologist.
Life and works
Assmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966–67, he was a fellow of the German ...
, have argued that the book describes the deceased as joining with the religious community of the living.
Erik Hornung says that in the ''Book of Traversing Eternity'' "the realm of the dead was brought into this life, and this other-worldly Egypt became the 'temple of the world', as it came to be called in
late classical antiquity."
Terence DuQuesne says that in the book "there is movement back and forth between places in Egypt and locations in the sky or in the netherworld… The text reads like a consecutive narrative, a magical mystery tour on different levels of reality."
Along with other funerary works, this text eventually superseded the ''
Book of the Dead''.
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See also
*
Egyptian mythology (Origins)
*
Eternity#Philosophy
References
Further reading
*{{cite book , last=DuQuesne , first=Terence , chapter='Effective in Heaven and on Earth': Interpreting Egyptian Religious Practice , editor1-last=Assmann , editor1-first=Jan , editor2-last=Bommas , editor2-first=Martin , title=Ägyptische Mysterien? , pages=37–46 , year=2002 , publisher=Wilhelm Fink Verlag , isbn=978-3-7705-3650-4 , ref=none
External links
*
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
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web pagedescribing a funerary tablet with text from the Book of Traversing Eternity
Ancient Egyptian funerary texts