Between the Middle and New Kingdoms, use of the Book of the Dead was no longer limited to royalty. The earliest known example appeared on the sarcophagus of the 13th-dynasty queen Mentuhotep (1633-1552 B.C.). How and when the Book of the Dead first came to be compiled is a mystery. Originally intended solely for the use of royalty, the oldest parts of the Book of the Dead were drawn from funerary writings known as the Pyramid Texts, which date back as far as the Egyptian Old Kingdom, to as early as 2300 B.C. Passages have been found inscribed on rolls of papyrus, on the bandages used in mummification, on tombs, and on the sarcophagi and grave goods of the dead.
Of the many versions of the spells that have been found, the texts’construction are not exactly alike-yet the arrangement of Lepsius’s publication helped scholars to see this body of work as a more coherent whole. However, there is no uniform version of the Book of the Dead. Although scholars had known of the magical content of the writings before Lepsius’s publication, his careful ordering of the spells and the assigning of a chapter number to each is the system still used to study them today.
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