“It’s Good to Be the King” – or Is It?

Iris C. Meijer is an amateur in the true sense of the word – one who loves. She fell in love with ancient Egypt when she was ten years old and it has been the longest and most enduring love affair of her life. Her academic credentials are not in Egyptology, however, but in the field of International Law. She has lived in Egypt for eighteen years now, and through self-study, observation and of course many courses such as this wonderful one on the Valley of the Kings by the Egypt Centre, has amassed quite a body of knowledge. She lives in a madhouse with eighteen Egyptian rescued dogs and cats called the House of Fluff, and is the author of the bilingual animal welfare awareness book for children in Egypt “Abdallah, Bondoq and Other Animals” with which workshops for children are taught all over Egypt, which soon will go online as video lessons (please check out the Facebook page with the same title). She is currently working on a project to join these interests and make a treasure hunt trail for children on pets and other animals in the Theban Tombs.

When in Luxor, one of the sights that of course cannot be missed is the famous Valley of the Kings – which is also the subject of yet another stellar Zoom course by Dr Ken Griffin. It is home to many tombs of pharaohs of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties of ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom, which vary from huge to small, elaborate to simple, lavishly decorated to hardly finished; the stark but beautiful Valley of the Kings seems like a very otherworldly place. Little do most visitors know that when they descend into the tombs to see the amazing and mysterious depictions the ancient Egyptians left behind, they actually are entering another world: the Netherworld, or in proper ancient Egyptian, the Duat (fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Twelfth Hour of the Amduat

Unlike the tombs of the nobles, which are dotted around the Theban Hills in their hundreds or perhaps thousands, the royal tombs (with the exception of five of them), do not depict the quite well-known Book of the Dead—a modern term for what is actually called the “Book of Coming Forth by Day”—but rather show other, much more esoteric funerary texts (fig. 2). When we visit the Tombs of the Nobles, we see beautiful depictions from this Book of the Dead, yes. The weighing of the heart, the judgement in front of Osiris and others, plentiful offerings. But we also see laid out before us an enormous variety of scenes of daily life, lavish banqueting, energetic fishing and fowling—a lot of very relatable images, even though they are all from the perspective of the elite—even the scenes of people working in the fields or making beautiful items are usually overseen by the elite. We actually know very little about what the other 98–99% of the people of ancient Egypt would have expected their afterlife to look like. This is because it was only the nobles (the elite) who knew how to read and write, and so left us written clues; they alone had access to the wherewithal to fashion such beautiful places to be laid to rest in.

 

Fig. 2: Book of the Dead spell 145, KV 14 

The elite, of course, still had nothing on the king when it came to level of afterlife, or life in this world, for that matter. In theory (and in very broad strokes), everything and everyone in Egypt ultimately belonged to the king and was there to serve him in his main divine duty of upholding maat: cosmic order, truth, and justice (fig. 3). Tough job, but it had its perks. So we’d be forgiven if upon entering a kingly tomb, we would expect to see lush scenes of an even more glamorous paradise than the nobles portray waiting for the king—a place where after all that mundane and divine responsibility he could finally relax and reap his rewards. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Fig. 3: Figure of Maat

Forget, for a moment, the lavish treasures and luxury found in Tutankhamun’s tomb, those cascades of gold we all know so well. Instead, focus on the walls, with the decorations and the deep texts that tell us what is actually going on in the afterlife that the king goes into. You see, these tombs were both literally and figuratively meant to represent the actual Netherworld. And the texts and decorations on the walls tell us that this is a dark and dangerous place, full of perils (fig. 4).

Fig. 4: Fourth Hour of the Amduat, KV 34

It is still relatively light at the entrance to the tomb where the sun can shine in, and where we often find beautiful depictions of the three divine stages/forms of the sun: the ram-headed God Atum (the setting sun in the West), and the scarab beetle God Khepri (the rising sun in the East). Both are encompassed by the glowing orb of the sun at midday, representing the God Ra (fig. 5). The Goddess Maat is often there, too, as if to say that even though we are now entering this enigmatic and threatening realm of the Duat, cosmic order, truth and justice still reign there too. The light of the day is still there, in both fact and in image. But as we descend further into the bowels of the craggy cliffs that these tombs are carved into, we enter a world of darkness. We are literally entering the night – and without the modern lighting that is in place now, we would feel that most acutely. During the night, the sun God Ra had to face many challenges and obstacles to overcome the menacing darkness and emerge again in the morning, triumphantly, as Khepri, the light in the East. And the king joins him in this quest, merges with him as it were. This is not, as in the Book of the Dead, a one-off journey and judgement: pass it and you are in the Field of Reeds or paradise as the ancients saw it. Oh no. This perilous journey with dangers threatening around every corner and at every gate had to be faced each and every single night, without fail. Over and over, and over again. Or else, there would be no sunrise. There would be no new day.

Fig. 5: Sun disk adored by Isis and Nephthys, KV 8 (Theban Mapping Project)

Thankfully, the king and Ra had very specific and literal help: elaborate texts including maps and ‘cheat sheets’. These so-called ‘Afterlife Books’, as Egyptologists refer to them collectively (the ancient Egyptians called them “That Which Is in The Duat”) are known under very arcane names: “The Amduat” (ancient Egyptian name: “The Book of the Hidden Chamber”), “The Book of Gates”, “The Book of Caverns”, “The Book of the Earth” (ancient Egyptian name: “The Books of the Creation of the Solar Disk”), “The Books of the Sky” (“The Book of the Heavenly Cow”, “The Book of the Day”, and “The Book of the Night”). There is also the “Litany of Re” (ancient Egyptian name: “The Book of Adoring Re in the West”), which enumerates the seventy-five names of the sun god—my favourite of course being “The Great Cat of Re” (fig. 6). It seems to depend on period and personal preference which one(s) were chosen to be included in which king’s tomb. Other than the much better known Book of the Dead, these texts have not been the subject of widespread study, and so much of what is actually meant by these very interesting texts is still up for debate. More debate is happening now, with quite a few books being published on them (a great one to start with is “The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife” by Erik Hornung).

Fig. 6: The Great Cat, KV 34

What we do know, however, is that these cryptic ancient books describe, in extremely specific but also, to us at least, extremely enigmatic terms, exactly what the sun god, and therefore his kingly companion would be facing on the journey through the twelve hours of the night. They include which route to take, what threats they needed to face and overcome, the names they needed to know in order to pass the many gates and appease the fearsome and fancifully named guardians of those gates, as well as the magical spells that needed to be uttered at precisely the right moment to clear yet another obstacle and continue on their way in the night. No gentle snooze for king or god during those nightly hours; rather, the need to know every single detail, the battle to slay Ra’s oldest opponent, the primeval serpent Apep, highly evolved magical work, precisely negotiating the watery expanse of the night in exactly the right way, different for each of the twelve hours and described in great detail for each one—all in order to get to the eastern horizon and rise again as Khepri, to ensure the future of humanity and the world again, as the one who gives life to everything: the sun (fig. 7). Definitely not a journey for the faint of heart—but luckily there was a lot of divine help along the way, too.

Fig. 7: Book of Caverns, final scene; Ba of Ra; Book of the Earth, part A, scenes 1-2, extracts, KV 14
(Theban Mapping Project)

So, was it good to be the king? Rather depends on how one views it. These texts focus very little on the deceased king as an individual being judged and then passing on to an afterlife that was the plus size version of the physical life the ancient Egyptians had had and adored so much (as the Book of the Dead does). Rather, they are all about making sure that Ra gets out of that Netherworld so that life and order did not collapse. Cyclically, eternally. No rest for the righteous, this virtuous king, this upholder of maat. There was royal work to be done, even in the long night that followed death. But again, there were perks. After the valiant effort during every single night, the king got to shine again during the twelve hours of the day, together with Ra, forever (fig. 8). Every single day. And that’s a pretty powerful reward.

Fig. 8: Beginning of the Book of the Day (Theban Mapping Project)

If you would like to hear exactly how detailed and esoteric these texts were, and how many names and spells needed to be remembered, check out the links for videos about the ‘Amduat’ at the bottom of the blog written by Marissa Lopez for this course two weeks ago.

Bibliography:

Abt, Theodor and Erik Hornung 2003. Knowledge for the afterlife: the Egyptian Amduat - a quest for immortality. Zurich: Living Human Heritage.

Darnell, John Coleman 2004. The enigmatic Netherworld Books of the Solar-Osirian unity: cryptographic compositions in the tombs of Tutankhamun, Ramesses VI and Ramesses IX. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 198. Fribourg; Göttingen: Academic Press; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Darnell, John Coleman and Colleen Manassa Darnell 2018. The ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books. Writings from the Ancient World 39. Atlanta: SBL

Hornung, Erik 1999. The ancient Egyptian books of the afterlife. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.

Roberson, Joshua Aaron 2012. The ancient Egyptian Books of the Earth. Wilbour Studies in Egypt and Ancient Western Asia 1. Atlanta, GA: Lockwood.

Warburton, David 2007. The Egyptian Amduat: the Book of the Hidden Chamber. Edited by Erik Hornung and Theodor Abt. Zurich: Living Human Heritage.

Werning, Daniel A. 2011. Das Höhlenbuch: textkritische Edition und Textgrammatik, 2 vols. Göttinger Orientforschungen, 4. Reihe: Ägypten 48. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.