ANCIENT EGYPT

The History, People and Culture of the Nile Valley

Contacts

Ancient Egypt Magazine

Issue Seven - June  / July 2001

Mapping the Afterlife

Maps are an everyday part of our lives. In addition to showing us locations, and presenting geographical information, maps enable us to recall journeys we have taken in the past. We can also use maps to plan ahead, to select a route we wish to travel, and possibly to indicate places of note that we might wish to visit close to our route. For most of us, maps are of real places, but you may also have seen maps of fantasy, of make-believe locations inspired by books, films or television and radio programmes.

Field of Offerings. With their images of the canals and fields of the afterlife, such depictions were essential reading for anyone intending to live after death.

The ancient Egyptians, like us, also produced maps, both of places on Earth and of places in strange and remote worlds, inhabited by demons or the blessed spirits. These places can be seen, in vivid and bright detail, on the walls of many of the tombs up and down the Nile valley, because these are maps of the worlds visited or inhabited by the dead.

The Egyptian afterlife and its geography were most unlike our modern, Western idea of ‘Heaven and Hell’. It is true that to achieve an eternal existence after death, a person had to live a ‘good’ life, but the Ancients probably saw the afterlife as another part of their mortal life, a ‘second’ life amongst the gods. Additionally, the Egyptian afterlife had many aspects; it was a multi-dimensional universe that perhaps bears comparison to some highly speculative ideas at the forefront of present theoretical cosmology.

Many of the ideas relating to the Egyptian afterlife incorporate a journey to reach a ‘Paradise’, or a daily journey enjoying the splendour of the sun god as his companion. In addition, the sort of afterlife the Egyptians envisaged changed over time and was dependent on who they were - kings, of course, having the most exciting, and potentially dangerous journey, and nobles having a simple passage to eternity, if punctuated occasionally with dangerous encounters and tasks.

Perhaps the earliest ‘afterlife maps’ to be seen are those on the coffins of some Middle Kingdom nobles. Some of these coffins depict a journey in which the deceased travels from this world, that of the living, onwards to join the sun god Ra on his sacred barque. Alternatively, the dead person arrives in a place described as the ‘Fields of Hotep’ (or Offerings).

We will shortly encounter the Fields of Offerings again, but the deceased’s journey passes along a path of water or of earth and gives the text based on this journey its modern name, ‘The Book of the Two Ways’. Some examples of this text show the deceased meeting demons, and passing through gates, while others indicate a place called Rosetau, named after the Giza plateau. Between the way of water and the way of earth lies a fiery band coloured red, the ‘channel of flame’ and we are told that no one can survive falling into it.

The purpose of this text was to give the person a guide to the Afterlife, so that he or she might know the correct path to take, whom they might see and what to say to them to in order to continue safely on their journey!

The ultimate aim of the noble man was to spend his eternity in the ‘Fields of Offerings’ where he could grow crops ‘as high as a man’, travel by boat on the eternal canals and rivers and worship his gods. Examples of the Fields of Offerings can be seen in Middle Kingdom coffins, but by far the best versions can be found in what we now call the ‘Books of the Dead’, known to the Ancient Egyptians as ‘the Book of Coming Forth by Day’.

Corridor in Ramesses III's tomb. The passage through the corridors of the afterlife needed the magic spells and directions given by the texts and images of these 'maps'.

Other examples were painted upon the walls of the tombs of the Egyptians, where they can still be seen today. The ‘Book of Coming Forth by Day’ contained many prayers designed to help the deceased to be reborn in the afterlife and can be described as a guide to the Afterlife. It was usually written on papyrus and buried with the dead person in his or her tomb.

Examples can also be found written on some coffins, especially from later dynastic times. Other parts of the texts continue the theme of offering information about the places a person might expect to pass through, and the demons and spirits he or she might meet on the way.

These ‘guardians’ of the gates took the form of grotesque monsters who would destroy anyone who could not appease them or subdue them with magic. But the afterlife of the ordinary Egyptian was nothing compared to the dangerous world of the deceased pharaoh. The dead king, as son of Ra, joined his father the sun on a nightly voyage through the darkness and its hidden threats. The details of these journeys take various forms on the walls of the magnificent royal tombs in places such as the Valley of the Kings at Luxor. One of the earliest descriptions was entitled ‘Am Duat’ or ‘What is in the Netherworld’.

This appears in kingly tombs such as those of Tuthmosis III and Seti I at Thebes. While crossing each of the twelve hours of the night in the boat of the sun god, the pharaoh encountered the spirits of various gods and demons.

During this journey, the sun god Ra (and the spirit of the dead king) passed through various incarnations before being reborn on the eastern horizon in the morning. The dead person also fought with evil spirits, often in the form of the snake Apophis, whose attempts to halt the divine entourage, if successful, would also bring time to an end. This whole lengthy journey was displayed on the walls of tombs of great size.

The journey began at sunset when the sun was greeted by baboons and goddesses (in the physical world, of course, the sun’s rising was greeted by troops of baboons, so perhaps we are seeing a ‘’reflection’ of the physical world in the afterlife).

The king, in the company of the sun god, travels along a celestial river, again reflecting the real world of the Nile, through the hours of night, passing lands of abundance on his journey. At the fourth hour, the travellers are forced to leave their boat, to travel through a desolate fiery wilderness upon the back of a great snake. This is Rosetau and the ‘kingdom of Sokar, who is on his sand’, and perhaps recalls some distant memory of the ‘Book of Two Ways’ we have already visited.

Travelling through the desert, the gods and the deceased meet with many spirits in the form of scorpions and snakes and the sun’s eye needs constant protection from evil magic.

The divine travellers pass a great island of sand, and during the fifth hour, they see the tumulus covering the grave of Osiris, from which the sun emerges renewed as a scarab beetle.

Throughout his journey, the sun god brings light to the darkened regions of the Afterworld, and as he passes through, the inhabitants of the various hours are heard to utter cries and wails. The ancient texts say that such cries sound to humans like the wind rustling through trees, or the cries of animals. Eventually, after traversing many thousands of miles through the twelve hours of night, the sun re-emerges triumphant on the eastern horizon and in his company the dead king returns to his tomb

There are a number of other ‘books’ that the Egyptians saw as guides to the Afterlife. Some give directions and descriptions, and place listings; others are simply images of the strange worlds encountered. In the tomb of Ramesses III, for instance, appear images from the ‘Book of Gates’, a similar ‘book’ to the Am Duat that takes the form of a journey during the night hours. This time, we see many more landscape features, such as Lakes of Fire and Life, mummies asleep in their shrines and between each hour stand the gates surmounted by flames and guarded by spirits that give the texts their modern name.

Elsewhere, burial chambers show journeys through the day and night skies as personified by the sky goddess Nut. She appears, swallowing the king and the sun god, before giving birth to them at the end of their journey through the heavens.

For the Ancient Egyptians maps, of the afterlife at least, were much more important than just a method of showing direction or indicating routes. They confer knowledge of the afterlife, giving passwords and spirit names, since it was through knowing the hereafter in detail that the perils of an eternal existence could be overcome. For the Ancient Egyptian, maps were more than just routeways through the night or the heavens; they were a most important key to a continued existence in their afterlife.

Back to Ancient Egypt Magazine - Issue Seven contents 

Return to Home 

e- mail to: info@ancientegyptmagazine.com

with questions or comments about Ancient Egypt Magazine.

or for sales, subscriptions, back numbers and advertising