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

Sixth Hour

sixth hour The Corpse of the Sungod and the Rebirth of Light Re-Union of the Opposites Sixth Hour 120 In the middle register, we encounter the central theme of this hour and, indeed, of this entire Book of the Netherworld. At the deepest point in the realm of the dead, the point where we reach the very edge of the primeval waters of Nun and their primordial darkness and where the domain of Apopis threatens creation with chaos and nonbeing, there lies a huge, ouroboric, multiheaded serpent with many faces, encircling the corpse of the Sungod in his form of Khepri. This image alludes in several ways to the mystery of the renewal of all life in the depths of the night. As a sign of its living power, the Sungod’s body is often depicted as ithyphallic or (as here) with one hand pointing to its mouth, the latter iconography referring to the hieroglyphic sign for “child.” On its head, we see a Khepri beetle, another common icon for regeneration. The recumbent body is called the“corpse of Khepri as his own flesh”or“corpse of Osiris.” The principal theme of this nocturnal hour is the union of the ba-soul of the Sungod with his corpse, or, as the Amduat also puts it, of Re with Osiris. This coniunctio results in two things that are, in fact, one and the same: the mystery of the awakening of the dead in the hereafter and the mystery of the renewal of light in the depths of the netherworld. Beginning at midnight, all vital impulses and, indeed, the whole cosmos are renewed through a mysterious process of regeneration. Re’s corpse proves to be the seedbed of renewal, for only when it is united with this body can the ba-soul awaken to new life. In a later Book of the Netherworld, the Book of the Earth, in which the corpse is equated with the corpse of Nun—that is, the primeval waters—the Sungod repeatedly addresses it,“O corpse from which I am risen.” All the blessed dead participate in the mysterious transformation of the Sungod. Re addresses them in the lower register of this hour of the Amduat: May your faces live, may your hearts breathe, and may your darkness be illuminated! May you dispose of water for yourselves, and may you be content with your offerings! Going forth for your ba-souls, which pass behind me! My ba-soul is with me, that I may alight on my corpse. Corpse of the Sungod and Rebirth of Light 121 The corpse of the Sungod, detail from sixth hour This is what the union promises to all who partake of it: life and peace, peace for the soul. I do not hesitate to call it the mysterium coniunctionis, the mysterious union of the opposites—namely, the same great mystery for which the alchemists searched over the centuries in their attempts to produce their philosophical gold.But what did the Egyptians have in mind with their image of the Sungod as a ba-soul approaching his corpse? Let us first consider the upper register. Directly above the ouroboric serpent encircling the corpse of the Sungod, we see three chests. They Sixth Hour 122 represent the “threefold burial of the Sungod.”1 We can recognize the hind part of a lion, one of the scarab’s wings, and a human head. This dismemberment alludes to that of Osiris, as we see from the fact that the names of the tombs refer to the Osiris myth. The accompanying text, however, makes it clear that the grueling battle between the two antagonists has ended. Now, peace reigns: Illuminated is the darkness in the earth! The flesh roars with joy, and the head speaks, after he has united his members. These are the mysterious images of the Netherworld. Painful though it might be, this dismemberment is inevitable, for it necessarily precedes the union and regeneration: complete dissolution precedes complete renewal. This idea is omnipresent in alchemy. Dissolution, dismemberment, fragmentation, incineration, and so forth are recurrent stages of the alchemical process. “In order to enter into God’s Kingdom,”says Jung in his Mysterium coniunctionis,“the king must transform himself into the prima materia in the body of his mother, and return to the dark initial state which the alchemist calls...