"The ancient Egyptian sources come alive, speaking to us without seeming alien to our modern ways of thinking. Andreas Schweizer invites us to join the nocturnal voyage of the solar barque and to immerse ourselves, with the 'Great Soul' of the sun, into the darkness surrounding us. Here in the illustrations and texts of the Amduat, threats hidden in the depths of our soul become visible as concrete images, an analysis of which remains ever worthwhile: even in the guise of the evil, ominous, or dark side of godhead with which Schweizer concerns himself. The netherworld into which we descend underlies our own world. Creative energies of dreadful intensity are active there, and only death, to which all must surrender, makes us truly alive by offering us regeneration from the depths."—Erik Hornung, from the Foreword The Amduat (literally "that which is in the netherworld") tells the story of the nocturnal journey of Re, the Egyptian Sungod, through the netherworld from the time when the sun dies, after setting in the west, to its rebirth at sunrise in the east. In the middle of the night, in the profoundest depths of the netherworld, this resurrection is made possible by a mystical union of the sun with the mummified body of Osiris, god of the dead. This great mystery of the union between the freely moving soul of the Sungod, longing for the bright and boundless sky, with Osiris's corpse, which is irrevocably bound to the subterranean realm of the dead, evokes the renewal of all life and the restoration of totality. In the Egyptian belief system, the pharaohs and in later times all blessed dead embarked on this same "night-sea journey" after death, ultimately becoming one with Re and living forever. The vision of the afterlife elaborated in the Amduat, dating from around 1500 B.C.E., has been influential for millennia, providing the model for an entire genre of Egyptian literature, the Books of the Afterlife, which in turn endured into the Greco-Roman era. Its themes and images persisted into gnostic and alchemical texts and made their way into early Christian portrayals of the beyond. In The Sungod's Journey through the Netherworld, Andreas Schweizer guides the reader through the Amduat, offering a psychological interpretation of its principal textual and iconographic elements. He is concerned with themes that run deep and wide in human experience, drawing on Jungian archetypes to find similar expression in many cultures worldwide: sleep as death; resurrection as reawakening or rebirth; and salvation or redemption, whether from original sin (as for Christians) or from the total annihilation of death (as for the ancient Egyptians).

In the Amduat, the night-journey of the Egyptian Sungod is divided into twelve hours, each of them containing an enormous amount of insight into the human psyche. The entire Amduat could be called the first 'scientific publication' of humankind describing or mapping the dangers, but also the regenerative capabilities of the night-world, providing answers to basic human questions. The synopsis of the different scenes of the Amduat, all in colour, together with its explaining text, is unique. This book is a treasure for all those who want to explore the archetypal structure of the objective psyche, with its helpful but also with its dangerous forces.

WHY THE AMDUAT IS SIGNIFICANT Every evening the sun becomes old and weak and finally sets behind the Western horizon. Yet, it rises again in the morning, rejuvenated. How is that possible? How could the sun for the Ancient Egyptians the Sungod become young and revitalized during the night, during his night journey? What happens during this time? The Amduat is a description of the journey of the Sungod through the nightworld, that is also the world of the deceased. The knowledge contained in the Amduat is meant for the dead Pharaoh. But the text also recommends this knowledge for living beings. Thus, the journey of the Sungod can also be seen as a symbolic representation of an inner psychic process of transformation and renewal.

In Egypt, from the Old to the New Kingdom, enigmatic texts were created on the basis of non-standardized lists of characters and phonetic signs, the exact principles of which are still unclear to this day. For the first time, this study examines in detail the three most comprehensive known inscription texts from the New Kingdom, which were discovered in the tombs of Tutenchamun, Ramses VI and Ramses IX. Darnell shows that these three texts have a theological, iconographic and formal connection, and calls them collectively the "Book of the Solar-Osirian Unity". Differentiated and lively, he presents the content and theological peculiarities of these texts that deal with the afterlife with each other and in relation to other enigmatic texts of the new as well as the Middle and Old Kingdom.

The first, complete English translation of the ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books The ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books, important compositions that decorated the New Kingdom royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, present humanity's oldest surviving attempts to provide a scientific map of the unseen realms beyond the visible cosmos and contain imagery and annotations that represent ancient Egyptian speculation (essentially philosophical and theological) about the events of the solar journey through the twelve hours of the night. The Netherworld Books describe one of the central mysteries of Egyptian religious belief—the union of the solar god Re with the underworldly god Osiris—and provide information on aspects of Egyptian theology and cosmography not present in the now more widely read Book of the Dead. Numerous illustrations provide overview images and individual scenes from each Netherworld Book, emphasizing the unity of text and image within the compositions. The major texts translated include the Book of Adoring Re in the West (the Litany of Re), the Book of the Hidden Chamber (Amduat), the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Books of the Creation of the Solar Disk, and the Books of the Solar-Osirian Unity. Features: Accessible presentations of the main concepts of the Netherworld Books and the chief features of each text Notes and commentary address major theological themes within the texts as well as lexicographic and/or grammatical issues An overview of later uses of these compositions during the first millennium BCE

This volume offers a survey about what is known about the Ancient Egyptians' vision of the afterlife and an examination of these beliefs that were written down in books that were later discovered in royal tombs. The contents of the texts range from the collection of spells in the Book of the Dead, which was intended to offer practical assistance on the journey to the afterlife, to the detailed accounts of the hereafter provided in the Books of the Netherworld. The author looks closely at these latter works, while summarizing the contents of the Book of the Dead and other widely studied examples of the genre. For each composition, he discusses the history of its ancient transmission and its decipherment in modern times, supplying bibliographic information for any text editions. He also seeks to determine whether this literature as a whole presents a monolithic conception of the afterlife. The volume features many drawings from the books themselves.

The Egyptian Book of Gates is the second large Pharaonic Book of the Afterlife after The Egyptian Amduat. The revised English translation is based on the German edition, edited by Erik Hornung. The hieroglyphs and transcriptions are given on the basis of a collation of the extant texts found in different tombs. The main illustrations of the text come from the sarcophagus of Seti I. The 100 scenes of the Book of Gates are furthermore represented with one or more colored illustrations, originating from different sources. With an Introduction by Theodor Abt. Contains Bibliography and Index.