The Sungod's Journey through the Netherworld: Reading the Ancient Egyptian Amduat

Fourth Hour

fourth hour The Snake-Land of Sokar The Dark Night of the Soul Fourth Hour 78 In the fourth hour of the night, we enter an entirely new region of the netherworld, one that is especially dark and dry. Its name is Rosetau, whose literal meaning in the ancient Egyptian language is“act of towing.” The sun barque has run aground in the shallows and can no longer be rowed along the flowing water. With arduous labor, the assisting deities must tow the barque through the sandy region of this nocturnal hour. Gone are the life-giving fertility of Wernes and the gentle light of the fields of Osiris, though the god is intimately present in this hour as well. In this Land of Silence, as it is also called, the darkness is so intense that even the Sungod himself can no longer see those who dwell on the banks. He can only hear their voices. The barren desert teems with snakes whose fiery breath illuminates the impenetrable darkness with a pale and ghostly light. This is the sandy Land of Sokar, and the fifth hour of the night will be called the“Cavern of Sokar.”Sokar, originally the falcon-headed god of death in the Memphite area, is a god of the earth, and in the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, he is already identified with Osiris.1 In his realm, the stream of life runs dry, and there is not enough water to carry the sun barque over the shallows . Without the supportive presence of the four deities who tow it, and without their rope, the continuity of creation would be seriously challenged . Here the Sungod is most definitely in need of the help of his entourage . His barque has been transformed into a double-headed serpent, for only the serpent can successfully traverse this dangerous region of the snake-demons. Several times, the Sungod’s journey is blocked by doors that bar the way, and the line of the stream of the netherworld, which was previously clear, is broken up into a confusing, zigzag path. In this imagery we see a psychological truth. There are times when obstacles bar the way to the further development of an individual, or even a whole nation, times when the dominant consciousness is in dire need of renewal, for it is morbid, no longer serves the flow of life, and is inadequate to the present situation and its requirements. In such times, the individual might easily fall into a severe depression. Nothing seems to move anymore. One can but wait for that moment when the “supportive 1 R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 119, § 620. Snake-Land of Sokar 79 deities towing the sun barque”—that is, psychologically, some auxiliary inner figures within the unconscious—become active and manage to overcome the present stagnation on a conscious level. At a national level, moreover, this would mean that the ruling political or religiousdogmatic order becomes undermined to the point where it finally collapses . In such chaos, renewal will be successful only when it is nourished by the underlying archetypal stream of life, that is, by the vivid and enlivening spirit. In the introduction to the fourth hour, we read that those who dwell in this mysterious region are well provided for. Despite the darkness that prevails, the blessed dead are not in want, for the necessities of life are available. Psychologically, this means that even when we suffer darkness—as, for example, in a state of depression—the energy needed for life can nevertheless be present, though the ego-consciousness may have only limited access to it. In such periods, the major part of our energy lies secluded in the collective unconscious, where a process of renewal is at work. In the area of religion, many myths contain the motif of pregnancy through death, and this motif will be discussed later. At the individual level, these periods leave us feeling somehow paralyzed, sad, depressed, and powerless. And yet, contrary to the peculiar stagnation we consciously experience, the psychic world of the unconscious is even more alive than usual, and this can cause a dangerous imbalance between the inner and the outer world. In the I Ching, hexagram number 36 shows how to deal with such a fatal situation.2 The basic theme of the hexagram is the darkening of light. The...