TheBook of Traversing Eternity is anancient Egyptian funerary text used primarily in theRoman period ofEgyptian history (30 BC – AD 390). The earliest known copies date to the precedingPtolemaic Period (332–30 BC), making it most likely that the book was composed at that time.[1]
The book describes thedeceased soul as visitingtemples inEgypt and participating in the cycle of periodic religious rituals, particularly those related to the funerary godOsiris. Some scholars have seen the book's content as a description of theDuat, similar to the "underworld books" from theNew Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC). Others, such asJan Assmann, have argued that the book describes the deceased as joining with the religious community of the living.Erik Hornung says that in theBook of Traversing Eternity "the realm of the dead was brought into this life, and this other-worldly Egypt became the 'temple of the world', as it came to be called inlate classical antiquity."[1] Terence DuQuesne says that in the book "there is movement back and forth between places in Egypt and locations in the sky or in the netherworld… The text reads like a consecutive narrative, a magical mystery tour on different levels of reality."[2]
Along with other funerary works, this text eventually superseded theBook of the Dead.[3]
