The Book of Gates

The Book of Gates is the principal guidebook to the netherworld found in 19th and part of the 20th Dynasty tombs of the New Kingdom, though it makes its first appearance to us with the last king of the 18th Dynasty. It was meant to allow the dead pharaoh to navigate his way along the netherworld route together with the sun god, so that his resurrection could be affected. It emphasizes gates with guardian deities who's names must be known in order to pass them. This is actually a very old tradition dating to at least the Book of the Two Ways in the Coffin Texts, where there are seven gates with three keepers at each. The Book of Gates narrates the passage of a newly deceased soul into the next world, corresponding to the journey of the sun though the underworld during the hours of the night.

We first know of the 'Book of Gates' in the late 18th Dynasty, but passages from the book appear in the burial chambers and first pillared halls of most tombs thereafter. Like the Amduat, but somewhat of a more sophisticated text, this book references the hours of the night, but referred to as the 12 gates and emphasis is placed on the gates as barriers. It deals with the problems of the underworld, such as Apophis, justice, material blessings and time.

The infinity of time was symbolized by an apparently endless snake or doubly twisted rope being spun from the mouth of a deity. Time is thought of as originating in the depths of creation, and eventually falling back into the same depths. The most complete texts we find in tombs appears on the tomb of Ramesses VI and on the sarcophagus of Seti I.

The soul is required to pass though a series of 'gates' at different stages in the journey. Each gate is associated with a different goddess, and requires that the deceased recognise the particular character of that deity.

The text implies that some people will pass through unharmed, but that others will suffer torment in a lake of fire.

The goddesses each have different titles, and wear different colored clothes, but are identical in all other respects, wearing a five pointed star above their heads.

Most of the goddesses are specific to the Book of Gates, and do not appear elsewhere in Egyptian mythology, and so it has been suggested that the Book of Gates originated merely as a system for determining the time at night, with the goddess at each gate being a representation of the main star appearing during the hour.

Sources of the Book of Gates

We are not sure exactly when the Egyptian afterlife text known as the Book of Gates was composed. While some authorities, such as Hartwig Altenmuller, believe that, because of its similarity to the Amduat, it sprang from a time prior to Egypt's New Kingdom, others think it may better be attributable to the Amarna period. Irregardless, the first example Egyptologists are aware of is that incomplete version in the tomb of the last pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, Haremhab, who had the text placed in the sarcophagus chamber where, until then, the Amduat had been customary. The founders of the 19th Dynasty also employed the Book of Gates.

Ramesses I included it alone in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings on the West Bank at Ancient Thebes (Modern Luxor), while his successor, Seti I', decorated the sarcophagus chamber of his tomb with the Amduat, reserving the Book of Gates for his two great pillared halls. This version includes only the first half of the book. However, Seti I's alabaster sarcophagus is adorned with the earliest complete and continuous version of the book. The famous Ramesses II also used the text in the upper pillared halls, sarcophagus chambers and subsidiary rooms of his tomb and his son, Merneptah, decorated the right wall of the corridor of his grandfather, Seti I's cenotaph at Abydos with a complete Book of Gates. There, he also placed the Book of Caverns on the left wall.

From Merneptah, the following kings until the reign of Ramesses IV had the text recorded on the walls of their sarcophagus chambers. A number of kings, such as Ramesses III also had selected text from the book placed on their sarcophagus, and some commoners, such as Tjanefer, a priest of Amun under Ramesses III, were also allowed to use a selection of the scenes. Ramesses VI broke from this tradition, replacing the text with the Book of the Earth in the sarcophagus chamber, but included a complete Book of Gates in the upper part of his tomb. However, Ramesses VII was actually the last pharaoh to include any of the Book of Gates, using the first and second hours in a single corridor. By Ramesses IX, it disappeared entirely from royal tombs.

After the New Kingdom, portions of the book continued to show up only sporadically, perhaps because the composition is so oriented to the specific person of the king. We find the concluding representations in the Book of the Dead of Anhai, which may date to the 20th Dynasty, as well as in the mythological papyrus of Khonsumes that dates from the 21st Dynasty and in the 26th Dynasty tomb of Mutirdis. Other extracts from the text are also found in the tombs of Petamenophis at Thebes and Horiraa at Saqqara, while the first hour and judgement hall occur often on late, non-royal sarcophagi.

Research on the Book of Gates

Because, in the tomb of Seti I and the Judgement of the Dead in the tomb of Ramesses VI, the Book of Gates depicted foreigners, it aroused the interest of scholars at an early date. These particular text were frequently copied. However, it was Jean-Francois Champollion who provided the first description of the Book of Gates, along with some translations in his 13th letter from Egypt, dated May 26, 1829. He mostly relied on the tomb of Ramesses VI for this translation. Yet the standard publication for many years was from an 1864 documentation of the alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I by Bonomi and Sharpe. In the ancient Egyptian text, the book is not named, so it was Gaston Maspero who originally designated it Livre de Portes (Book of Gates).

He also referred to it as the Livre des Pylones, or "Book of Pylons, and Eugene Lefebure called it Livre de l'Enfer, or "Book of the Netherworld". Lefebure also provided a brief survey of its contents for an essay in 1888. Previously, he had already published the first translation of the text on from the Seti I sarcophagus in 1878 and 1881.

In 1905, Budge described and translated the sarcophagus version and made a comparison between its hours of the night and those in the Amduat. However, because by this time the lid of the sarcophagus had been destroyed, his analysis was erroneous. The incomplete version of the Book found in the tomb of Horemhab was published in 1912 (after having only been discovered in 1908). More recent editions of the Book of Gates include that published by Charles Maystre and Alexandre Piankoff, who created a broader textual basis with their work of 1939-1962. However, this version was replaced by that of Erik Hornung in 1979. Today, the complete English version of the text by Pankoff has been available since 1954, while the German translation created by Hornung has been around since 1972.

Structure of the Book

The Book of Gates portrays the gates of the netherworld far more visibly and systematically than other similar compositions. It compares most readily with the gates in the Book of the Dead, spells 144 and 145, which the Ramesside Period Egyptians considered a substitute for the Book of Gates in tombs that did not belong to pharaohs, such as that of Nefertari and others in the Valley of the Queens. In fact, gates in the Book of the Dead spells and elsewhere have caused some confusion with the Book of Gates even among some scholars. The concept of gates in the afterlife was a reoccurring theme amongst many of the books of the afterlife.

On the sarcophagus of Seti I, the hours are in a continuous sequence resulting in the concluding scene occurring directly behind the head of the deceased. The Osireion and the tomb of Ramesses VI also provide a continuous text, though in other tombs the hours are distributed over various walls and rooms.

The Book of Gates encompasses a total of one hundred scenes, many of which fill an entire register, though the last two hours contain a number of brief individual scenes. The Middle Egyptian of dialect of the text displays hardly any influences from the Late Egyptian written language, though it has been established that this composition contains an especially rich vocabulary.

The structure of the Book of Gates is very similar to that of the Amduat, with twelve nocturnal hours each divided into three registers. As in the Amduat, the first hour of the night has a special position with a structure that differs from the remainder of the composition. However, in the last three hours, the main figure (Atum or Horus) is omitted from the lower registers, which show only deities and not the blessed dead. Also absent are long concluding texts. Instead, we find depictions of the Judgment of the Dead and the course of the sun, not divided into registers, in the middle and at the end of he composition. Also absent are notations concerning the use of the Book, but are replaced by remarks about offerings, which as a rule are located at the end of a scene (though not in the final three hours).

The Book of Gates also differs from the Amduat by the means of the gates depicted at the end of each hour. In the Book of Gates, each gate has a guardian in the form of a serpent on its door, as well as two further guardians with scary names and fire spitting uraei. Also, in the solar barque, only two gods, Sia and Heka are found depicted together with the sun god, while there are many crew members in the Amdaut. In the Book of Gates, the cabin of the barque in each hour is protected by a mehen-serpent and four male figures are portrayed like hieroglyphs towing the barque. In the sarcophagus chambers of Haremhab, Ramesses I and Seti I, the clothing and beards of these figures clearly mark them as human, rather than divine beings.

The judgement hall of Osiris is given a special, central position inserted into the fifth gateway of the Book of gates. Situated just prior to the union with the sun's corpse in the sixth hour, the texts are specifically cryptic. However, beginning with the tomb of Seti I, this judgment scene is replaced by one depicting the king before the enthroned (and later standing) Osiris, so that no longer are the dead judged, but rather the king is identified with the ruler of the dead.

More than a thousand deities and deceased persons, representing many more than in the Amduat, are depicted within the Book of Gates. However, they are more regularly combined into groups, and they bear fewer individual names. Many of these groups represent deceased persons rather than deities.

Content

This text, like other netherworld compositions, is concerned with the nocturnal journey of the sun. Compared to the Amduat, the hours are somewhat displaced. For example, in the Book of Gates, the drowned appear in the ninth rather than the tenth hour. Also, because of the grouping of deities and deceased persons, they are more clearly distinguished from each other then in the Amduat, and the dead appear bound to their respective regions in the hours of the night. Here also, the dead king's special status is more clearly defined, as he accompanies the sun god to his rebirth in the morning. In fact, most versions contain additions to the texts and representations that refer directly to the king.

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