Coffin texts: Did you mean...?

Rectangular wooden inner coffin of Sen from Deir el-Bersha, Middle Kingdom of Egypt, 12th Dynasty, c. 1850 BCE. The British Museum, London.

The Coffin Texts (c. 2134-2040 BCE) are 1,185 spells, incantations, and other forms of religious writing inscribed on coffins to help the deceased navigate the afterlife. They include the text known as the Book of Two Ways which is the first...

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest religious writings in the world and make up the principal funerary literature of ancient Egypt. They comprise the texts which were inscribed on the sarcophogi and walls of the pyramids at Saqqara in the 5th...

Medicine in ancient Egypt was understood as a combination of practical technique and magical incantation and ritual. Although physical injury was usually addressed pragmatically through bandages, splints, and salves, even the broken bones...

The rarity of the appearance of Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms in ancient literature is one of the reasons why those states are so little-known today. Indo-Greek literature did exist, but none has been found that speaks about the...

This fragment of limestone contains text in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that was found in the pyramid of Pharaoh Pepi I Meryre (r. c. 2335–2285 BCE). (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)

This manuscript book contains the translated works of Hippocrates and Galen, and it is entitled "Passage of Works by Hippocrates and Galen." It was compiled by Amirdovlat Amasiatsi or "Amirdovlat of Amasia" (c. 1420-1496 CE) who wrote in...

The Library of Ashurbanipal (7th century BCE) is the oldest known systematically organized library in the world, established in Nineveh by the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (r. 668-627 BCE) to preserve the history and culture of Mesopotamia...

Libraries were a feature of larger cities across the ancient world with famous examples being those at Alexandria, Athens, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Nineveh. Rarely ever lending libraries, they were typically designed for visiting scholars...

This coffin was part of a larger necropolis in "Old Smyrna" (established in the 11th century BCE) and is believed to be from the 7th or 6th century BCE. The necropolis contained the remains of nobles who died after the attack of Alyattes...