This is E.A. Wallace Budge's translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead from 1895. The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text used from the beginning of the New Kingdom to around 50 BCE. The original Egyptian name for the text is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day or Book of Emerging Forth into the Light. In fact, it is a loose collection of texts consisting of a number of magic spells intended to assist a dead person's journey through the Duat, or underworld, and into the afterlife. Those texts were written by many priests over a period of about 1,000 years.