ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -“Book of the Dead” is a modern term to describe a series of ancient Egyptian funerary spells that helped the deceased find their way to the afterlife in order to become united with the god of the dead, Osiris. There are nearly 200 known spells, but they weren’t collected into books in our current sense of the word.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Pyramid Texts are the earliest surviving religious literature incorporating poetic verse. These texts do not appear in tombs or pyramids originating before the reign of Unas (r. 2375–2345 BC), who had the Pyramid of Unas built at Saqqara.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Book of the Dead (Ancient Egyptian: , rw n(y)w prt m hrw(w)) is an ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BCE) to around 50 BCE.

Detailed explanation-4: -The group that we call the Book of the Dead developed from spells that were first inscribed on scarabs and coffins at the end of Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period, around 1650 BC. By the New Kingdom, around 1550–1069 BC, scribes started writing Book of the Dead spells on papyrus scrolls.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Book of the Dead, dating to the Second Intermediate Period, describes how the world was created by Atum, the god of Heliopolis, the centre of the sun-god cult in Lower Egypt. In the beginning, the world appeared as an infinite expanse of dark and directionless waters, named Nun.