If you are interested in ancient Egyptian religion, one of the key texts that you must read is The Egyptian Book of the Dead. But as you do that, you must realize that in some way, the Book of the Dead is a modern creation. The texts are indeed ancient but the collection that we find in modern versions is modern. We don’t have an ancient collection with all of these texts gathered together.
Having said that, these texts are extremely important, especially for understanding the Egyptian religion. These are not myths put together for entertainment or even for theological speculation. These are spells used, especially for royalty and other higher classes, in their tombs to help in their transition to the afterlife.
For the ancient Egyptians, it was not enough to have been a faithful worshiper of a specific god to get a good afterlife. While living a moral life was important, just living that life wasn’t enough. The deceased also needs to be able to express correctly how they lived their life to the god and other beings in the underworld.
The Book of the Dead gives a few details about the myths of the Egyptian gods but not much. If you want the stories, you will have to go elsewhere and then come back and search for the connects. This book is more about the deceased than the gods.
How does this book fit with the Jesus Myth Theory? Often Jesus Mythicists will quote phrases from this book in their attempt to demonstrate the Egyptian origins of Jesus. You will find some similar phrases here and there (“lord of lord and king of kings”) but what will strike the reader who goes through the entire collection is how different Egyptian religion is from what we find in the New Testament.
Closest that we get to what we find in the Book of the Dead is Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats from Matthew 25. But even then, what Jesus says turns the Egyptian themes upside down.
If you are interested in potential connections between Egyptian religion and the Gospels, you definitely should read the Book of the Dead.
