In the tombs of the Valley of the Kings the walls do not tell the life of the pharaoh, but his destiny after death. The oldest and most important of the texts that decorate them is the Amduat, "the book of what is in the underworld". It describes, hour by hour, the sun's journey through the twelve hours of night, from sunset to rebirth at dawn. The dead king, united with the sun, travels the same path.
What the title means
Its ancient Egyptian name was "The writing of the hidden chamber". The term Amduat comes from the expression imy-duat, "that which is in the Duat", that is, in the underworld. The Duat was not a hell in the sense of a place of punishment for all, but the subterranean, nocturnal space crossed by the sun, peopled by deities, spirits and dangers.
Where it is found
The Amduat first appears in the royal tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The most famous complete version is in the tomb of Thutmose III (KV34), where the text is painted on the walls of the burial chamber with stylised, almost sketched figures that imitate the look of an unrolled papyrus. The effect is that of an open book surrounding the sarcophagus.
During the New Kingdom the Amduat was joined by other "books of the afterlife", among them the Book of Gates and the Book of Caverns, which describe the same journey with different images and structures.
The structure
Each hour is divided into three horizontal registers. In the middle sails the barque of the sun, in which the god appears ram-headed, the form he takes at night. Above and below are arranged the beings of the Duat.
| Hours | Essential content |
|---|---|
| 1 | Entry into the west, passage from twilight to night |
| 2-3 | Fertile, watery regions, fields allotted to the spirits |
| 4-5 | The desert of Sokar: the barque becomes a serpent to glide through sand |
| 6 | The deepest point: the sun unites with the body of Osiris |
| 7 | The defeat of Apophis, the serpent of chaos |
| 8-11 | Renewal, punishment of enemies, preparation for birth |
| 12 | Passage through the body of a great serpent and rebirth as Khepri |
The key moments
The sixth hour
This is the heart of the book. At the deepest point of the night, the ba of the sun unites with the body of Osiris. The two deities, the light that renews itself and the death that keeps watch, become one for an instant. From this union comes the force that will allow the sun to rise again.
The seventh hour
Here Apophis appears, the great serpent who tries to halt the barque by drinking the water of the underground river. Isis, standing at the prow of the barque, confronts him with the power of her magical words, while the scorpion goddess Serqet and other deities bind him and pierce him with knives. It is the effective word, even before weapons, that halts chaos.
The twelfth hour
The barque enters the tail of an enormous serpent and emerges from its mouth. The sun, transformed into the scarab Khepri, is reborn on the eastern horizon. The body of Osiris, by contrast, remains in the Duat: death endures, but life is renewed.
A text of knowledge
The Amduat insists on knowledge. Many captions repeat that whoever knows the images and names of the beings of the Duat will be favoured, both on earth and in the beyond. Some passages state that these images are painted "as in the hidden chamber", that is, according to a secret model kept by the priests.
This esoteric character, in the original sense of reserved knowledge, is one reason the Amduat fascinates. It was not a text for everyone: for centuries it remained reserved for kings and, later, for high-ranking priests who reproduced it on funerary papyri.
The journey as a model
The sun's night journey is an image of transformation: descent into darkness, encounter with death, struggle against chaos, rebirth. Maestro Cornelio presents it as one of the oldest and most coherent symbolic maps of the inner path, in which darkness is not the opposite of light, but the place where light regenerates.
In short
- The Amduat describes the sun's journey through the twelve hours of night.
- The most famous complete version is in the tomb of Thutmose III in the Valley of the Kings.
- In the sixth hour the sun unites with the body of Osiris, at the deepest point of night.
- In the seventh hour the serpent Apophis is immobilised.
- In the twelfth hour the sun is reborn as the scarab Khepri.
