Ra’s Nightly Journey Through the Duat

Each night, the sun god Ra sailed into the underworld. The Egyptians called this hidden realm the Duat (also Dwat, Tuat), and they imagined it as a mirror-image of the Nile Valley, lying under the earth and west of the world. It was a place of fire and water, of strange creatures, of gates and pits and great caverns, where the souls of the dead lived and where the sun was reborn. Erik Hornung’s The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (1999) is the standard reference for the whole corpus, and Quirke’s The Cult of Ra (2001) is the place to go for the theology of the journey itself.

The story of Ra’s nightly journey is the most detailed account of the Egyptian underworld that survives. It is told in several funerary texts, most importantly the Amduat (“That Which Is in the Underworld”) and the Book of Gates, both of which were painted on the walls of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings.

This page describes the journey. For a broader view of the sun gods, see the cluster page on Ra and the Sun Gods.

The Two Barques of Ra

The Egyptians believed that the sun crossed the sky each day in a boat called the Mandjet (the Boat of Millions of Years), and that at night he entered the underworld in a second boat called the Mesektet (the Night Boat). The two barques were often shown together, sailing on a single horizon, carrying the sun through the day and through the night.

The Mandjet carried Ra on his daily journey. It was crewed by a wide variety of gods, including Sia (perception), Hu (authoritative utterance), and several hours of the day, who steered the boat through the sky.

The Mesektet carried Ra into the underworld. It was crewed by a different team, including Ma’at (truth), Thoth (wisdom), and twelve gods representing the hours of the night. These twelve gods each guarded one of the gates of the Duat.

The Twelve Hours of the Night

The Egyptian night was divided into twelve hours. Each hour was a separate region of the underworld, with its own gate, its own inhabitants, and its own dangers. The sun had to pass through all twelve hours to be reborn at dawn.

The Amduat, painted on the walls of the tomb of Tuthmosis I in the Valley of the Kings, describes the journey in detail. The book is divided into twelve sections, one for each hour. Each section shows:

• The sun boat sailing through a long, narrow landscape
• A series of gates, each guarded by a different god
• The souls of the dead, both blessed and damned
• A central figure of Ra, often in the form of a ram
• The chaos serpent Apophis, lurking in the waters

The hours are not the same length. The first hours of the night are spent in the most dangerous parts of the underworld, where Apophis attacks and the sun is vulnerable. By the later hours, Ra has passed the worst dangers and approaches the eastern horizon, where he will be reborn.

Apophis: The Chaos Serpent

The greatest danger of the journey was Apophis (Apep, Apepi), the chaos serpent. Apophis was a giant snake who lived in the depths of the Duat and tried to attack the solar barque each night. The Egyptians believed that the sun’s journey was a continuous battle, and that if Apophis ever won, the sun would not rise.

Apophis is usually shown in Egyptian art as a long, undulating snake, often with a knife or spear in his coils. In the Amduat, he appears at the gates of several hours, twisting through the waters. The crew of the Mesektet is shown attacking him with knives, spears, and magic spells.

The Egyptians had a special text called the Book of Apophis, which contained spells to be recited by the priests of Ra to weaken the serpent. The most important of these was a long, repetitive spell that called on the names of Ra to bind Apophis and prevent him from moving. The spell was to be recited at the right moment of the day, often at sunset, to ensure the success of the sun’s journey.

The Gods of the Duat

The underworld was full of gods. The most important of them, beyond Ra, were:

• Osiris, the ruler of the underworld, who sat on his throne in the Hall of Two Truths and judged the dead. See Anubis and the Weighing of the Heart.
• Anubis, who guided the dead and opened the gates for the sun boat.
• Thoth, the divine scribe, who recorded the names of the dead and the events of the journey.
• Hathor, who welcomed Ra at the gates of the underworld in her fierce form as the “Lady of the West.”
• Sokar, a falcon god of the Memphite necropolis, who guarded the boundary between life and death.
• Wepwawet, a jackal god who “opened the ways” for the sun.
• Nut, the sky goddess, who swallowed the sun each evening and gave birth to him each morning.

These gods had specific roles in the journey. Anubis opened the gates; Thoth spoke the words of power; Hathor received the sun at the end of the night; and Nut, finally, swallowed the sun in the west and gave birth to him in the east.

The Souls of the Dead

The souls of the dead lived in the Duat. They were the akh, the blessed dead who had passed the judgement, and they were believed to work in the fields of the Field of Reeds during the day, when Ra was sailing above them. When Ra entered the underworld at night, they were there to greet him, to receive his light, and to praise his name.

The Duat was also home to the smiters of souls, the evil dead, the unburied dead, the souls who had failed the judgement. These were the demons and torments of the underworld, who attacked the barque of Ra and the souls of the blessed.

In the Amduat, the blessed dead are shown at certain hours, working in the fields, pulling the barque through the waters, and greeting the sun. The damned are shown bound, tortured, or being driven away by the gods.

The Book of Gates

The Book of Gates is another major funerary text, closely related to the Amduat. It is painted on the walls of the tombs of Seti I, Ramesses III, and other New Kingdom pharaohs.

The Book of Gates divides the night into twelve hours, but it emphasizes the gates that the sun must pass through to enter the underworld. Each gate is guarded by a different god, and the gatekeepers demand passwords from the sun boat. The crew of the Mesektet must know the right spells, names, and passwords to pass.

The Book of Gates also includes dramatic scenes of judgement, in which the dead are weighed and the evil are condemned. It is a darker, more violent text than the Amduat, and it shows the dangers of the underworld in vivid detail.

The Solar Journey and the King

The solar journey was the model for the king’s own journey through the underworld. In the royal tombs of the New Kingdom, the walls are covered with the Amduat, the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Litany of Ra, and other solar texts. These texts were believed to give the king the spells he needed to navigate the underworld after death, and to join Ra in the solar barque at the end of his own life.

The king’s journey was not the same as the ordinary Egyptian’s. The ordinary Egyptian hoped to be admitted to the Field of Reeds; the king hoped to join Ra in the solar barque and become a star. From the solar barque, the king would sail through the underworld, and from the underworld he would rise into the sky, where he would join the akh, the imperishable stars, and live forever.

The Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious literature in the world, contain dozens of spells to help the king join the solar barque. The Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead extended these spells to the broader population.

The Solar Journey in Daily Ritual

The solar journey was not just a story about the afterlife. It was a model for the daily ritual of the sun temples and the great state temples. The priests of Ra at Heliopolis recited the spells of the Amduat and the Book of Gates at sunset, in the hope of helping the sun through the dangers of the night.

In the great state temples, like the Temple of Karnak, the morning ritual of offering the sun to Amun-Ra echoed the moment when Ra emerged from the underworld. The festivals of the temple, the Opet Festival, the Festival of the Valley, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, were all tied to the solar cycle and the journey through the underworld.

The Sun’s Rebirth

At the end of the night, the sun emerged from the Duat and rose into the sky. The Egyptians believed that this rebirth happened at the eastern horizon, where the sky goddess Nut gave birth to the sun each morning.

The image of the newborn sun was the scarab beetle, Khepri, who pushed the sun disk above the horizon like a beetle pushing a ball of dung. The scarab became the symbol of rebirth, transformation, and the morning sun.

The new day began. The sun sailed across the sky in the Mandjet, and the cycle began again. The next night, the sun would enter the Duat, fight the chaos serpent, and be reborn once more. The nightly journey of Ra was the most theologically elaborate single myth in ancient Egyptian religion.