Inventory number

Drawing description

The manuscript’s visual representation describes the Sun-god Re’s nocturnal journey through the last two hours of the night. The treatise’s visual model resembles the prototype established that decorates the 18th Dynasty royal burial chambers in the Valley of the Kings, but the scribe struggled to maintain the linguistic features of the cosmography. Besides, several deities are missing (deities 754, 757-758, 763-765, 770, 777, 781-782, 788, 792, 797, 802, 805, 811 in the Eleventh Hour and deities 833, 844-845, 847, 851, 874-882, 903-907 in the Twelfth Hour). The treatise’s structure consists of three horizontal registers presenting Re, in his nocturnal shape as a ram-headed deity, travelling on the solar boat through the last two netherworld regions. In the Eleventh Hour, the top register’s first vignette shows Atum emerging from a winged serpent. Here, the reader can observe the absence of the snake of time Sd-wnw.t (He who takes away the hours) who represents the flowing concept of time. In the following scenes, eight gods guard and protect the Sun-god’s mysteries, and four goddesses, riding double snakes, bring Re’s bidding in the sky to fruition. Ten deities tow the solar barque in the middle register and carry the serpent Mehen over their shoulders; two crowned serpents resembling Isis and Nephthys, and three deities bearing Neith’s forms, accompany the Sun-god’s path through this region. The bottom register presents one of the Netherworld’s apotropaic features where Horus’ hypostasis orders the destruction and annihilation of the hostile forces that interfere with establishing the natural order (Cfr. the Maat principle). In the first scene, one lion-headed goddess and three anthropomorphic fire-spitting and knife-wielding goddesses slaughter Re’s enemies over their fire-pits, while in the second scene, five anthropomorphic deities punish Osiris’ enemies in the western desert. In the Twelfth Hour, the top register presents eleven goddesses with fire-spitting snakes on their shoulders, punishing Re’s nemesis Apophis and brightening the Netherworld’s darkness, while ten worshipers, characterised by the typical adoration gesture with raised hands, praise the Great God. In the middle register, to complete Re’s rejuvenation process, fourteen gods and four 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, who is 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 seven primaeval deities with wAs sceptres and nine rowers of the solar barque alongside the serpent nsr-m-ir.t=f (He who burns with his eye). In the final scenes, five worshippers adore and praise sSm-iwf (Image of the flesh), the corpse of Osiris who is restricted into the boundaries of the Netherworld. On the manuscript’s far right-hand side, the etiquette shows the deceased, Tanedjemetmut, offering a perfume-burner, a nebris (the skin of a feline, perhaps a leopard), funerary supplies and lotus flowers to Amenophis I who is identified by the throne name Djeser-ka-Re in the cartouche.