Much of what we know of ancient Egypt is to do with death, funerary rites, tombs and the afterlife. Our picture is biased by the kinds of evidence that have survived to modern times. But there was a lot more to Egyptian life than the Book of the Dead and the Pyramids. Retrieved by generations of archaeologists are fragments of another kind of literature. Magic incantations and spells, hymns – and stories. The stories have been collected by Gaston Maspero