The myths of the Egyptians were referred to by various classical writers including the Greek Herodotus, who visited the country in 450BC. However, most of our knowledge comes from the discovery of abundant sacred texts and images protected by the desert sand across Egypt.

The main source for ancient Egpytian myths concerning creation, the gods and rebirth are tombs, coffins, and scrolls. However the principal purpose of the texts and images recorded there was not to recount the myths but to assist the dead on their perilous journey into the afterlife. The stories are therefore only implicit. Further insight into the Egyptians' beliefs is given by inscriptions on temple walls, spells, prayers, incantations, an hymns. Some of the most striking accounts of the unfolding of creation have survived on the interior and exterior surfaces of wooden coffins. Information about Atum's "divine masturbation" was included among the Coffin Texts (as they are known) found at Bersha, near Hermopolis. They were made for those who could afford an elaborate burial. The earliest funerary texts, date from the early third millennium BC. They were carved onto the walls of nine royal pyramids of the Old Kingdom and were composed exclusively for the king. However, by the New Kingdom such texts had evolved, via the Coffin Texts, into the so-called Book of the Dead, which was reproduced individually for the deceased. Known to Egyptians as "The Chapters of Coming Forth By Day" these widely available texts were written on papyrus and could contain up to two hundred different chapters, according to the wealth of the owner. The papyrus was rolled up and placed in a special container in the coffin alongside the corpse. In the hearts of all Egyptians was the fear that they might fail to speak the correct words that would help them reach eternity when their heart was weighed against the feather of truth before the throne of Osiris, Lord of the Underworld. A typical formula from the Book of the Dead, offering defensive spells for the judgement scene, proclaims: "Oh Far Strider, who came forth from Heliopolis, I have done no falsehood; Oh Fire-embracer who came forth from Kheraha, I have not robbed." Temple librares were repositories for a whole range of texts, but until the Ptolemaic period few were of a non funerary nature.