Sources
There is no Egyptian bible.
What survives is a set of funerary compositions, temple inscriptions and a few literary papyri, each from a particular time and place, and they disagree with each other. Almost every popular account is a retelling of a retelling that never tells you which of these it came from.
The Pyramid Texts
c. 2400-2300 BCE, Fifth and Sixth Dynasties
Carved inside the burial chambers of pyramids at Saqqara
The oldest substantial religious writing to survive from anywhere. Spells to carry the dead king into the sky to join the imperishable stars and the sun god. Not a narrative: a wor...
2 myths on this site cite it
The Coffin Texts
c. 2100-1800 BCE, First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom
Painted inside wooden coffins, chiefly at Asyut and Deir el-Bersha
The successor to the Pyramid Texts, now available to officials rather than kings alone. Includes the Book of Two Ways, the earliest known map of the underworld.
2 myths on this site cite it
The Book of the Dead
c. 1550 BCE onward, New Kingdom to Roman period
Papyri placed with the burial; the Papyrus of Ani is the best known
Properly the Book of Coming Forth by Day. Around two hundred spells, drawn on selectively, including Spell 125, the negative confession before the forty-two judges, and the weighin...
1 myth on this site cite it
The Amduat
c. 1500 BCE onward, New Kingdom
Royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings
A route map of the twelve hours of the night through which the sun god travels, is regenerated at midnight by uniting with Osiris, and emerges at dawn. Strictly royal for most of i...
1 myth on this site cite it
The Contendings of Horus and Set
c. 1160 BCE, Twentieth Dynasty
Papyrus Chester Beatty I
The fullest surviving narrative of the succession dispute, running eighty years of divine litigation before a tribunal, complete with bribery, shapeshifting and open comedy at the ...
1 myth on this site cite it
The Memphite Theology
Inscribed c. 700 BCE, claiming much older origin
The Shabaka Stone, now in the British Museum
Creation by Ptah conceiving the world in his heart and speaking it into existence, an intellectual account of creation with few parallels that early.
1 myth on this site cite it
Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris
c. 100 CE
Written in Greek, by a Greek priest of Apollo
The only connected, complete telling of the Osiris myth that survives, and the source of almost every modern retelling: the dismemberment into fourteen pieces, the search, the miss...
1 myth on this site cite it
The Book of Gates
c. 1300 BCE onward, New Kingdom
Royal tombs, notably those of Horemheb, Seti I and Ramesses VI
A second, rival description of the sun's twelve hours of night, differing from the Amduat in scheme and in cast. Each hour is entered through a gate guarded by a serpent that must ...
The Great Hymn to the Aten
c. 1350 BCE, Eighteenth Dynasty
Carved in the tomb of the courtier Ay at Amarna
The fullest statement of Akhenaten's religion: the sun disc as sole creator, giving life to Egypt and to foreign lands alike, with the king as the only intermediary. It is also, by...
The Instruction of Ptahhotep
Middle Kingdom copies, claiming Old Kingdom origin
Papyrus Prisse, in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, and other copies
Wisdom literature: a vizier's advice to his son on conduct, speech, listening, greed, and how to behave toward superiors, equals and inferiors. The closest thing Egypt produced to ...
The Dispute Between a Man and His Ba
c. 1900 BCE, Middle Kingdom
Papyrus Berlin 3024
A man weary of life argues with his own ba about whether to die. The ba threatens to abandon him, which would end any hope of an afterlife. The poetry in the middle section, on dea...
The Great Hymn to Osiris
c. 1400 BCE, Eighteenth Dynasty
The stela of Amenmose, now in the Louvre
The fullest Egyptian account of the Osiris story, covering his kingship, his death, the search by Isis, the conception of Horus and the vindication of the heir. Still praise rather...
Translations of these texts published before 1930 are in the public domain, which is what makes quoting them lawful here. They are also old: Budge in particular is a century behind current scholarship and is heavily criticised by Egyptologists. Where a public-domain translation is unreliable this site says so rather than presenting it as current.