The Book of Going Forth Around Elevenish

The title is the entry. The Egyptian funerary compilation we call the Book of the Dead was known to its own scribes as the Book of Going Forth by Day — and Pratchett’s revision of that into Around Elevenish does, in three words, what Djelibeybi’s entire satire needs: a civilisation with the machinery of eternity and none of the urgency.

It belongs in the catalogue chiefly as a companion to the Septateuch. Small Gods is about a scripture that outlived its god; Pyramids is about a ritual apparatus that outlived its purpose and is still being funded. Dios and the Omnian Quisition are the same institutional problem wearing different hats — the priest for whom the observance has entirely replaced the thing observed.

This is a slighter entry than most, and it is included partly to mark a real category. Funerary texts, legal codes and government documents are all on the project’s future-scope list, and this is the first of them to be filed.

On the readability rating. Named and characterised, not quoted. The rituals surrounding it get far more page time than the text ever does.