Guides to the beyond

Illustration from the Litany of Re, a religious text, in the tomb of Tuthmosis III. This work shows the many different forms of the sun god Re and celebrates his union with the dead pharaoh.

The complex religious beliefs of the New Kingdom pharaohs included a conviction that after death they would become one with both Osiris, the god of the underworld, and the great sun god Re. But first, the pharaoh expected to face many perils in the underworld. Tombs in the Valley of the Kings were decorated with figures and texts from funerary literature. Some of these magical and religious works offered spells or were intended as guides to the dangers of the underworld.

One of these guides, or books of the underworld, was the Amduat. It described the perilous journey that the sun god Re made in his solar boat through the underworld each night. The pharaoh believed that after his burial to the west of Thebes, where the sun was seen to set, he would unite with the sun god and then be reborn as one with Re in the eastern sky at dawn.

Scene from the Amduat (meaning 'that which is in the underworld') in the tomb of Tuthmosis III, one of the earliest in the Valley of the Kings.

Scene from the Amduat in the tomb of Ramesses III. The sun god Re in ram-headed form is accompanied by other gods in his solar boat as he traverses the underworld at night and confronts its dangers.