Source books
Books
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12 books of 370 · oldest first
Egyptian religion and magic 12
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c. 2400–2300 BCE
Pyramid Texts
Inscribed inside royal pyramids, among the oldest substantial religious texts known. Their utterances concern the dead king's transformation, protection, ascent and...
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c. 2100–1650 BCE
Coffin Texts
Extends formerly royal funerary privileges to a broader elite, elaborating the journeys, dangers and powers available after death.
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from c. 1550 BCE
Egyptian Book of the Dead
A changing collection of funerary spells rather than one fixed book. Individual papyri were assembled for the deceased and supplied the knowledge, incantations and instructions...
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c. 430 BCE
Histories
Nine books of enquiry into the Persian wars and the peoples around them. Book II is given almost entirely to Egypt, and is the oldest sustained account of Egyptian religion by...
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copied II BCE - IV CE
The Greek Magical Papyri
Working handbooks rather than a book: invocations, hymns, recipes, divination and dream procedures, curses, love spells and rites of divine encounter, copied and added to by...
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Rome, 1652–1654
Oedipus Aegyptiacus
Three volumes claiming to decipher the hieroglyphs, which it does not. It carries the engraved Sephirothic Tree that became the standard diagram of Western occultism — the...
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1901
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undated
The Book of Gates
ancient Egyptian funerary text
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undated
The Book of What Is in the Duat
literary work
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undated
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undated
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undated