Before the Church · c. 1550 BC; older material, copied for centuries after
The Book of the Dead
The Book of Coming Forth by Day
Anonymous
What it is
Spells written on papyrus and buried with the dead to get them safely through. At the centre is the weighing: the heart set against the feather of truth while the deceased denies forty-two sins one by one — I have not stolen, I have not caused pain, I have not held back water in its season.
Why it lasted
The oldest sustained account of a judgement after death that turns on moral conduct, and the ancestor of the scales in every medieval doom painting in Europe.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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