OSIRIS and transformed into a god. For this reason Old
Kingdom courtiers sought burial close to the king,
hoping for inclusion in his funerary cult so that they too
might be granted some form of afterlife, although the
best that they could hope for was a continuation of their
earthly status.
However, with the collapse of the Old Kingdom
came greater self-reliance and with it a process which is
sometimes described by Egyptologists as the
Democratization of The Afterlife. This meant that
everyone could have access to the afterlife, without being
associated directly withthgroyal cult:
These new aspirations of the deceased are set out in
a collection of spells painted in cursive hieroglyphs
inside the wooden coffin.
The Coffin Texts were intended to provide a
guarantee of survival in the afterworld and some of them
are the ancestors of spells found in the New Kingdom
Book of the Dead.