The cosmological genre of the New Kingdom includes a wide variety of compositions detailing different aspects of the sun god’s cyclical journey, from sunset in the west each evening through sunrise and rebirth each the morning. These works describe the geography and events of the afterlife, in which the sun god encounters dangers, revives the deceased, and is ultimately renewed before rejoining the world of the living. Within the broader cosmological genre, scholars have distinguished various sub-genres, including etiological treatises, Books of the Sky, and Books of the Netherworld. The present thesis concerns those compositions that belong to the Netherworld group, which focus on the nocturnal aspect of the solar journey, which is described
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2306 BCE). These spells were composed for the purpose of propelling the deceased king’s spirit into a favorable afterlife among the great gods, in the sky. From the late First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom (Dyns. 11-12, c. 1980-1760 BCE), the Pyramid Texts— formerly the prerogative of royalty—disappeared from royal tombs and began to appear in private tombs, alongside a new genre of so-called Coffin Texts. These series of spells are attested exclusively in private contexts and seem to have been available to anyone who could afford a decorated coffin. Within the Coffin Texts, one series of spells, known in modern scholarship as the “Book of Two Ways,” described and, for the first time, utilized figural images to depict the paths that the deceased might follow in the afterlife, through a variety of locales, such as to the “Field of Offerings” or the “palace of Osiris.” The Book of Two Ways, as the first guide or map to the afterlife, provided the basic cosmological and cosmographic template for the Netherworld Books of the New Kingdom (Dyns. 18-20, c. 1539-1077 BCE). Unlike earlier mortuary literature and contemporary Books of the Dead, the principle focus of the Netherworld Books was their narrative imagery, …show more content…
More importantly, these two groups are differentiated also by their layouts and some key iconographical distinctions. The earlier books, the Amduat and the Book of Gates, were divided into twelve sections, corresponding to the twelve hours of the night, with each hour separated visually from the next. In the Amduat, these divisions were indicated through vertical lines of text, while the Book of Gates employed as separators annotated, figural representations of monumental gates and their serpent guardians. Both books featured the sun god in his nocturnal, ram-headed form standing his solar barque in the middle register of a predominantly tri-partite register system. The later compositions, including the Books of Solar-Osirian Unity, Book of Caverns, and Books of Earth, employed various organizational systems, which diverge from the twelve-hour divisions of the earlier books, as well as from each other. However, the later books can be categorized broadly as bipartite compositions, in which the duat was split into two symmetrical halves. Moreover, each of the later books regularly depicts the sun god by means of his sun disk, or as the god within a disk, in addition to occasional use of the earlier, solar barque
2306 BCE). These spells were composed for the purpose of propelling the deceased king’s spirit into a favorable afterlife among the great gods, in the sky. From the late First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom (Dyns. 11-12, c. 1980-1760 BCE), the Pyramid Texts— formerly the prerogative of royalty—disappeared from royal tombs and began to appear in private tombs, alongside a new genre of so-called Coffin Texts. These series of spells are attested exclusively in private contexts and seem to have been available to anyone who could afford a decorated coffin. Within the Coffin Texts, one series of spells, known in modern scholarship as the “Book of Two Ways,” described and, for the first time, utilized figural images to depict the paths that the deceased might follow in the afterlife, through a variety of locales, such as to the “Field of Offerings” or the “palace of Osiris.” The Book of Two Ways, as the first guide or map to the afterlife, provided the basic cosmological and cosmographic template for the Netherworld Books of the New Kingdom (Dyns. 18-20, c. 1539-1077 BCE). Unlike earlier mortuary literature and contemporary Books of the Dead, the principle focus of the Netherworld Books was their narrative imagery, …show more content…
More importantly, these two groups are differentiated also by their layouts and some key iconographical distinctions. The earlier books, the Amduat and the Book of Gates, were divided into twelve sections, corresponding to the twelve hours of the night, with each hour separated visually from the next. In the Amduat, these divisions were indicated through vertical lines of text, while the Book of Gates employed as separators annotated, figural representations of monumental gates and their serpent guardians. Both books featured the sun god in his nocturnal, ram-headed form standing his solar barque in the middle register of a predominantly tri-partite register system. The later compositions, including the Books of Solar-Osirian Unity, Book of Caverns, and Books of Earth, employed various organizational systems, which diverge from the twelve-hour divisions of the earlier books, as well as from each other. However, the later books can be categorized broadly as bipartite compositions, in which the duat was split into two symmetrical halves. Moreover, each of the later books regularly depicts the sun god by means of his sun disk, or as the god within a disk, in addition to occasional use of the earlier, solar barque