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

Tenth Hour

tenth hour The Bodyguard of the Sungod Ready to Fight for the New Tenth Hour 166 The upper register of the tenth nocturnal hour makes renewed reference to the ambivalence of every creative act. As in the Land of Sokar (fourth hour), we encounter the motif of the healing of the Sungod’s injured eye. Though the Living Scarab depicted at the beginning of the upper register points to the coming birth, every birth brings vulnerability and death. The good of creation and damaged life belong inalienably together, and this is why the eight standing goddesses must not be absent. Like the baboon called “Flesh who carries his Eye,” who is seated facing them, they are associated with the healing of the Eye of Horus. With their tremendous healing power, these goddesses are aspects of the mighty lionheaded Sakhmet (thus the name of the first goddess), and like her, they are full of magic power. More than any other goddess, Sakhmet embodies the ambivalence of all life. She causes diseases, but she also heals them. Such is the atmosphere in which the birth symbolized by the scarab takes place. Its forelegs hold an oval filled with dots, a symbol we encountered in the fifth hour. The oval represents the entirety of the netherworld, and here, as in the case of the oval at the bottom of the Cavern of Sokar, it symbolizes the renewal of the Sungod, that is, the regenerative power of the netherworld. Between the scarab and the healing goddesses, there are two scenes in the center of which we see two red disks, the first disk carried by two snakes,“the double-coiled,” and the second, smaller one by “the wrapped (staff?),”representing the hieroglyph for“god.”As the accompanying text relates, they indicate the cure and healing of the two eyes of the Sungod. And as the two assisting goddesses make clear, the healing of Re’s solar and lunar (small disk?) eyes is in the hands of the feminine. The psychological meaning is that the healing of the new consciousness (sunlight) needs the strong support of a feminine principle that is obviously quite different from the masculine forces of Re’s bodyguard in the middle register . The two serpents carrying the first disk suggest that it is the archaic and ambiguous (two snakes, two goddesses, etc.) law of nature that supports this healing process. To surrender to this law is an indispensable precondition for every “fight for the new,” as the subtitle of this chapter suggests. The tenth hour is dominated, however, by the primeval waters of Nun in the lower register. In it rest the “drowned ones in the netherworld,” Bodyguard of the Sungod 167 that is, all who have lost their lives by drowning in the Nile. Since their bodies were carried off by the current, they could not be given a proper burial. The Egyptians, to whom tomb and burial rites were so important , could not help but wonder what would happen to a person whose corpse was missing. The Amduat supplies the earliest answer we know of. Before discussing it, however, we shall consider the central scene of the middle register. The twelve figures representing Re’s bodyguard are divided into three groups of four gods who are provided, respectively, with arrows, spears, and bows. Their names, Disk-head, Arrow-shooter, and so forth, make it unambiguously clear that these gods are sure of their aim, unerring, and intrepid. This is the attitude needed for attaining new consciousness and new insight. For this reason, many mythical heroes carry special weapons presented to them by the gods. The weapons carried by Re’s bodyguard symbolize the accuracy and steadfastness with which the new content must be defended against all inimical forces. “They are those,” so the accompanying text says of the bodyguard, “who fend off ‘Horrible-of-face’ (Apopis) in the Unified Darkness (i.e., primeval darkness), so that this Great God may pass into the eastern gateway of the horizon.” Though Apopis was successfully defeated in the seventh hour, he must now be repulsed yet one more time. From a psychological point of view, the weapons symbolize the keenness , clarity, and vigilance of a new mental attitude whose differentiating ability and straightforward energy resist the ever-present threat of a relapse into the former unconsciousness (symbolized by Apopis). Though an archetypal image rising from the collective unconscious has an...