thumb|[[Middle Kingdom of Egypt|Middle Kingdom coffin with the Coffin Texts painted on its panels|upright]]

The Coffin Texts are a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary spells written on Ancient Egyptian coffins beginning in the First Intermediate Period. They are partially derived from the earlier Pyramid Texts, reserved for royal use only, but contain substantial new material related to everyday desires, indicating a new target audience of common people. Coffin texts are dated back to 2100 BCE. Ordinary Egyptians who could afford a coffin had access to these funerary spells and the pharaoh no longer had exclusive rights to an afterlife.

As the modern name of this collection of some 1,185 spells implies, they were mostly inscribed on Middle Kingdom coffins. They were also sometimes written on tomb walls, stelae, canopic chests, papyri and mummy masks. Due to the limited writing surfaces of some of these objects, the spells were often abbreviated, giving rise to long and short versions, some of which were later copied in the Book of the Dead.

See also

  • Ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs
  • Ancient Egyptian funerary texts

References

Bibliography

  • Raymond O. Faulkner, "The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts", , 3 vols., 1972–78.
  • The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, Erik Hornung,
  • The Egyptian Coffin Texts, edited by Adriaan de Buck and Alan Gardiner and published by the University of Chicago Oriental Institute
  • Volume 1, Texts of Spells 1-75
  • Volume 2, Texts of Spells 76-163
  • Volume 3, Texts of Spells 164-267
  • Volume 4, Texts of Spells 268-354
  • Volume 5, Texts of Spells 355-471
  • Volume 6, Texts of Spells 472-787
  • Volume 7, Texts of Spells 787-1185
  • Volume 8, Middle Kingdom Copies of Pyramid Texts
  • Coffin Texts
  • The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Part I
  • The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Part II
  • The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, Part III