ABSTRACT
The floors of the el-Bersheh coffins are used for a set of somewhat enigmatic texts known as the 'Book of the Two Ways'. Like many other coffin decoration schemes with floor decoration, the Book of the Two Ways appears to be a counterpart to a sky theme, representing perhaps a descent into and a journey around an underworld. Absence of evidence is never evidence of absence in archaeological terms, nonetheless, the impact of the Book of the Two Ways in the locality of el-Bersheh and for the perhaps four generations of its incorporation in coffins is considerable. The Book of the Two Ways may be an insight into the spatial and temporal geographies of the Middle Kingdom Egyptian. There are some aspects of the 'landscape texts', however, that share common features with elements of modern cartographic design and usage of , as well as those that may show what the key elements of Egyptian art might have been.
