Inventory number

Drawing description

The manuscript’s visual representation describes the Sun-god Re's nocturnal journey through the Twelfth Hour of the night. The treatise's visual model perfectly resembles the prototype established that decorates the 18th Dynasty royal burial chambers in the Valley of the Kings. However, a few deities are missing (deities 826, 856, 873, 885 and 886). The treatise's structure consists of three horizontal registers presenting Re, in his nocturnal shape as a ram-headed deity, travelling on the solar barque through the last netherworld region. The top register presents thirteen goddesses with fire-spitting snakes on their shoulders. They punish Re’s nemesis Apophis and brighten the Netherworld’s darkness. Here there are also twelve worshipers, characterised by the typical adoration gesture with raised hands, who praise the Great God. In the middle register - in order to complete Re's rejuvenation process, twelve gods and twelve goddesses tow the solar barque through the entire body of the life-regenerating serpent anx-nTr.w (Life of the gods). On the register’s far right-hand side, we see the accomplishment of this deed: a beetle known as Khepri, the Sun-god in his renewed form, exits the Netherworld by travelling through the outstretched arms of the air-god Shu to be reborn as the sun disk at dawn. The bottom register presents two primaeval deities with wAs sceptres, as well as nine rowers of the solar barque alongside the serpent nsr-m-ir.t=f (He who burns with his eye). In the final scenes, ten worshippers adore and praise sSm-iwf (Image of the flesh), the corpse of Osiris, who is restricted into the boundaries of the Netherworld.