The modern English name for the ancient Egyptian funerary text called “The Book of Coming Forth by Day” is the Book of the Dead.
The Egyptian title is commonly translated as “Spells of Coming Forth by Day,” referring to the deceased’s hoped-for freedom to move through the afterlife and emerge into daylight. The English label “Book of the Dead” was introduced in the nineteenth century, even though the work is not a single book with one fixed version.
Instead, it is a changing collection of magical, ritual, and funerary spells copied on papyrus, placed in tombs, or inscribed on coffins and walls. It developed from earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts and was used especially from the New Kingdom, beginning around 1550 BCE, into the Ptolemaic period.
A frequent misunderstanding is that every Egyptian burial included the same complete text. Surviving papyri contain different selections, arrangements, illustrations, and local traditions. The famous Papyrus of Ani is one particularly rich example, not the universal edition.