Book of the Day and the Book of the Night

Definition

The Book of the Day and the Book of the Night are a matched pair of New Kingdom "Books of the Sky" — compositions painted on tomb ceilings that trace the sun god across the full day-and-night circuit over the body of the sky goddess Nut, who arches over the earth as the vault of the sky. The Book of the Day follows the sun's daytime path; the Book of the Night follows his passage through the dark. Together they complete one solar cycle, best preserved side by side in the tomb of Ramesses VI.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read the pair as the sky-going counterpart to the underworld books. Where the Amduat and Book of Gates take the sun beneath the earth, these "Books of the Sky" set his journey on the body of Nut herself: she gives birth to the sun each morning and swallows it each evening. The sun god changes form between them — falcon-headed by day, reborn as a scarab at the dawn that ends the night.

In Practice

These are ceiling compositions, so picture them across a tomb roof rather than down a wall. In the Book of the Day the sun is born each morning from the vulva of Nut, travels across her arched body through the daylight hours, and is swallowed again at her head in the evening; because it is the daytime journey, the sun god wears a falcon's head, and the text is largely a roll-call of deities with hymns to the hours. The Book of the Night picks up from the moment Nut swallows the sun to his rebirth at dawn as a scarab beetle. It is split into twelve sections marked off by vertical lines of text called "gates," with the sun's boat (its "barque") in the middle of three horizontal bands, called registers. Its cosmographical text — a description of the shape of the cosmos — names the sun's three realms: the Duat (underworld), the Nun (the primeval waters of creation), and Nut (the sky).

Historical Origin

Both are New Kingdom compositions. The Book of the Day in the New Kingdom is found only in the tomb of Ramesses VI, where it occurs together with the Book of the Night. The Book of the Night first appears on ceilings; its earliest version is that of Sethos I in the Osireion (his cenotaph) at Abydos, and it recurs down to the royal tombs at Tanis. The modern study followed here is Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife (translated by David Lorton, 1999).

Further Reading

• Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife