The destiny of the world : a study on the end of the universe in the light of ancient Egyptian texts

"The subject of this thesis is a theme that has not been fully studied until today and that has long been thought to be overlooked by the ancient Egyptians in a negative way. The aim of this thesis is then to look carefully into the texts dealing with this theme to reveal how exactly the ancient Egyptians felt about it. The texts scrutinized are divided according to their nature. In the first section of the thesis, the Complaints are studied. In the second section, the Prophecies are analyzed while in the third section, Magical and Funerary texts are being examined. Only the fourth section does not deal with a specific group of texts but with one text, the most important one, Chapter 175 of the Book of the Dead and its parallel. This text is analyzed in the light of other quotations from ancient Egyptian Literature. The analysis then builds up in detail, answering how, and why the world will be destroyed, and whether this destruction will be final or not, leading at the end to the final comment."