Aker

AH-ker

egyptian: ȝkr

Definition

Aker is the ancient Egyptian earth-god, usually shown as a double creature — the foreparts of two lions or two sphinxes joined back to back, one facing east and one facing west, for the two horizons where the Sun rises and sets. He is the deepest, darkest stretch of earth the nighttime Sun must cross. In the New Kingdom "Books of the Netherworld" — illustrated guides to the underworld (Egyptian Duat) — the night-Sun passes through Aker's body on the lowest leg of its journey before it can rise again at dawn.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read Aker as a cosmic-geographic earth-god rather than a deity with his own temple cult. His two-horizon, back-to-back form ties him to the solar journey: he is the ground the Sun sinks into in the west and climbs out of in the east. Through that body the night-Sun makes its passage. Aker is distinct from Geb, the reclining earth-god who is the consort of the sky-goddess Nut.

In Practice

In Egyptian-tradition glossary work, Aker marks the earth-gate the Sun transits at the turn of night — the threshold between sunset, the depths, and sunrise. He appears in two main settings. In the older Pyramid Texts, the funerary spells carved in Old Kingdom royal pyramids, the singular Aker opens the gate of the earth so the dead king can pass below, and protects him by seizing the serpent-demons of the underworld (Pyramid Texts utterances 504 and 676). In the New Kingdom Book of the Earth — a royal-tomb composition so centred on him that one scholar, Altenmüller, simply called it the "Book of Aker" — the solar boat rests on Aker's mound, and he holds down the cut-up coils of the chaos-serpent Apophis. For an Egyptian-tradition reading, think of Aker as the horizon-gateway of the deepest hour, not a sign or a planet.

Historical Origin

Aker is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (utterances 504 and 676, c. 2400-2300 BCE), where the singular Aker opens the earth-gate and grasps serpent-demons; the plural form akeru also occurs. His central New Kingdom role is in the Book of the Earth, found in royal sarcophagus chambers (fully developed in the tomb of Ramesses VI). He is treated in Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003), and Hornung, *The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife* (Cornell 1999).

Further Reading

  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
  • Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife