ctive for the welfare of the dead. Originally these texts
had an application to the king alone, but before the beginning of the
XIIth Dynasty private individuals had begun to employ them on their own
behalf. They seem to be relatively free from textual corruption, but the
vocabulary still occasions much difficulty to the translator.

(b) _The Book of the Dead_ is the somewhat inappropriate name applied to
a large similar collection of texts of various dates, certain chapters
of which show a tendency to become welded together into a book of fixed
content and uniform order. A number of chapters contained in the later
recensions are already found on the sarcophagi of the Middle Kingdom,
together with a host of funereal texts not usually reckoned as belonging
to the Book of the Dead; these have been published by Lepsius and Lacau.
The above-mentioned nucleus, combined with other chapters of more recent
origin, is found in the papyri of the XVIIIth-XXth Dynasties, and forms
the so-called Theban recension, which has been edited by Naville in an
important work. Here already more or less rigid groups of chapters may
be noted, but individual manuscripts differ greatly in what they include
and exclude. In the Saite period a sort of standard edition was drawn
up, consisting of 165 chapters in a fixed order and with a common title
"the book of going forth in the day"; this recension was published by
Lepsius in 1842 from a Turin papyrus. Like the Pyramid texts, the Book
of the Dead served a funerary purpose, but its contents are far more
heterogeneous; besides chapters enabling the dead man to assume what
shape he will, or to issue triumphant from the last judgment, there are
lists of gates to be passed and demons to be encountered in the nether
world, formulae such as are inscribed on sepulchral figures and amulets,
and even hymns to the sun-god. These texts are for the most part
excessively corrupt, and despite the translations of Pierret, Renouf and
Budge, much labour must yet be expended upon them before they can rank
as a first-rate source.

(c) The texts of the _Tombs of the Kings at Thebes_ (XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.)
consist of a series of theological books compiled at an uncertain date;
they have been edited by Naville and Lefebure. The chief of these,
extant in a longer and a shorter version, is called _The book of that
which is in the Nether World_ (familiarly known as the _Am Duat_) and
deals with the journey of the sun during t