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The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text, used from the beginning of the New Kingdom (around 1550 BCE) to around 50 BCE. It is a collection of texts intended to assist a dead person's journey through the underworld, and into the afterlife, which were written by many Egyptian priests over a period of about 1000 years. The Book of the Dead was part of a tradition of funerary texts which includes the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts, which were painted onto objects.