 Franz Letz reported for the New York Times that in dynastic times of Egypt, the journey to the afterlife was so perilous that you needed a guidebook to get there. The dramatic headline was inspired by the research being carried out by a team that is being led by Harko Willems of the University of Leuven who examined multiple high-resolution images of 4,000-year-old wood fragments recovered from a burial shaft in the necropolis of Dear Elbersia and detects texts from the ancient guide to the underworld known as the Book of Two Ways. This copy of the Book of Two Ways was etched into the cedar coffin of a woman named Ankh who may have been related to a provisional official and is thought to date to the Middle Kingdom, making it about 40 years older than other known copies. Such an illustrated guidebook would have offered directions and spells necessary to navigate challenges met in the underworld, whether a soul chose to travel by land or by water in order to reach the realm of Osiris, the God of Death, and become linked for eternity to the creator Ra. A journey more perilous than New York City's subway system, the Book of Two Ways is a mysterious cosmic roadmap and a guide to the Egyptian afterlife. This is a precursor to the Book of the Dead and depicted two zigzagging paths by which scholars long ago concluded the soul, having let the body of the departed, could navigate the spiritual obstacle course of the underworld and reach the realm of Osiris, the God of Death. Who was himself dead? If you were lucky enough to get the go-ahead from Osiris' divine tribunal, you would become an immortal God. Rita Lucarelli, an Egyptology curator at the University of California Berkeley, made a statement to the New York Times on the matter when interviewed and she said that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with life in all its forms. Death for them was a new life. In the new study which was published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Dr. Willems detailed how a team of researchers under his direction on Earth remains of a 4,000-year-old Book of Two Ways, the earliest known copy of the first illustrated book, and in 2012 they reopened a long-abandoned burial shaft in the cliffside necropolis of Deer el-Bershaw, a Coptic village midway between Cairo and Luxor on the eastern side of the Nile which was the main cemetery for the region's governors, or monarchs, during Egypt's Middle Kingdom. The shaft that Dr. Willems investigated was one of five in the tomb complex of the Nomark Ankh. Twenty feet down, the researchers found the remains of a sarcophagus neglected by previous generations of archaeologists, however most of its contents had been looted or destroyed by fungi, but two rotting cedar panels turned out to be etched with images and hieroglyphs. Under Dr. Willems' amazement, the fragments of text were from a Book of Two Ways, inscriptions found nearby referred to the reign of Pharaoh, who ruled until 2010 BC, and these suggest that the manual is some four decades older than any of the two dozen extant copies. He has directed the dig at Deer el-Bershaw since 2001. Before that, the last time the tomb had been investigated was 86 years earlier when it was explored by George Reisner, an American Egyptologist, supported by Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The images were only applied in paint, but the hieratic text were written in black and red ink and later traced coarsely with a knife and although almost all color of the planks had disappeared and only the scratches remained. Dr. Willems managed to decipher many of the faint engravings using high resolution images and he says, to me what's funny is the idea that how you survive in the nether world is expressed in male terms. To the ancient Egyptians, creation and regeneration were solely the province of male gods. The goddesses were believed to be protective vessels. The pronoun he was essentially even for female deceased people because they needed to be like Osiris. Generally, each individual's book differed in length and lavishness depending on its owner's wealth or status. This one begins with a text encircled by a red line designated as Ring of Fire, Dr. Willems said. The text is about the sun god passing this protective fiery ring to reach Osiris. Gates feature prominently as two looping lines indicating the separate roads to the afterlife surrounded by malignant spirits and other supernatural beings. The final image shows a bark dragged on a sledge, Spell 1128 and follows the final text Spell 1130 which yokes the dead person's identity forever to the sun god, Ra, the creator. Assuming Ankh cast her spell properly, she has become a god. Just a short one for you guys today to help us jumpstart the new year and we will of course be back just shortly with more content in our search for understanding as to who we are as a people and why there is so much forgotten knowledge present in the construction of the ancient things as well as what was going on here on earth in the distant past. Make sure to be part of the journey and we will see you in the comments section below. Thank you guys for hanging in there as I'm recovering from a very terrible cold in this new year so be sure to comment below guys and as always thank you for watching.