“Unveiling the Secrets of Eternity: The World’s Oldest Illustrated Guide to the Egyptian Underworld Discovered!”
The incredible discovery, published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, happened at the village Dayr al-Barsha (or Deir el-Bersha) where the cliff-side necropolis of the region’s governors who ruled during Egypt’s Middle Kingdom were laid to rest inside elaborately decorated tombs.
In 2012, guided by archaeologist Harco Willems from Belgium’s University of Leuven, a team of researchers investigated one of the five burial shafts located inside the tomb complex of Ahanakht. Twenty feet down inside the burial shaft, the team found the remains of a sarcophagus that appeared to be completely undisturbed despite the previous presence of grave robbers and other archaeologists at the site.
Judging by the remains and the setup of the sarcophagus, it belonged to an elite woman named Ankh who was related to an elite government official. Her cedar coffin had deteriorated due to being overrun by fungi but upon closer inspection, the crumbling casket revealed something unexpected.
Inside the sarcophagus were remarkable etchings explicitly quoting from the Book Of Two Ways, which is made up of hieroglyphs and illustrations describing Ankh’s wayward journey into the afterlife.
“These ‘coffin texts’ tend to situate the deceased in the world of the gods,” Willems said. “Sometimes they are combined with drawings. At Deir el-Bersha, one frequently encounters Books of Two Ways.”
Werner Forman/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesMarkings on the floor of a coffin showing the “two ways” of the ancient Egyptian afterlife referred to in the Book of Two Ways.
“The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with life in all its forms,” explained Rita Lucarelli, an Egyptology curator at the University of California, Berkeley. “Death for them was a new life.”
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