Traversing eternity
Subtitle: texts for the afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
By: Mark Smith.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Oxford
Language: eng
Number of pages: 725
ISBN-13: 9780198154648
Subjects: Future life; Egypt -- Religion -- 332 B.C.-640 A.D
Description: "Traversing Eternity studies Egyptian ideas about death and the afterlife during the Ptolomaic and Roman Periods. It analyses Egyptian attitudes toward death, looks at the various means by which the Egyptians attempted to ensure a smooth transition from existence in this world to that in the next, and examines how they envisaged life in the hereafter. The book is based upon a corpus of sixty texts specially selected for the light which they throw upon these topics, each illuminating or illustrating a different facet of them. Each text is translated in its entirety, with annotation supplied to elucidate obscure points, and each is also provided with a detailed introduction which explains how, where, when, by whom, and in what circumstance it was intended to be used." "Traversing Eternity offers the reader the most comprehensive available study of these texts, at once incorporating the latest scholarly research and thoroughly accessible. Some of the works selected for inclusion have never been published before in any form, while others appear here in translation for the first time. The book also addresses key issues such as that of continuity and change in Egyptian religious beliefs during the Ptolomaic and Roman Periods and attempts to answer the question of why the composition of texts for the afterlife flourished to such a remarkable extent at this time."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.