ABSTRACT
The decision to assert knowledge of the underworld by means of a measurement could be more important to the ancient writers and readers than the particular numeral and unit given. Several passages from ancient Egyptian funerary literature include linear measurements for features in the underworld. The scale of the surviving output is colossal, and this quantitative context is vital for appreciation of the few passages with measurements of the underworld. Buildings are absent from the one other Middle Kingdom chart of an underworld landscape, the Marsh of Offerings. Flinders Petrie retrieved thousands of papyrus fragments from his two 1889 seasons of clearance at the late Middle Kingdom town site at Lahun. In contrast to their position in the New Kingdom Book of the Dead, on Middle Kingdom coffins the two compositions generally occur together, with the recurrent sequence Coffin Texts 154-160.
