Book of the Earth

Definition

The Book of the Earth is a late New Kingdom "Book of the Netherworld" — a royal funerary text tracing the sun god through the underworld at night. It is found only in the sarcophagus chambers (the burial rooms holding the king's coffin) of royal tombs, fully developed in the tomb of Ramesses VI. Like the Book of Caverns it has no division into the twelve hours of the night; its theme is the sun's passage through the body of the earth, embodied by the earth god Aker. For this reason it is also called the Book of Aker.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat the Book of the Earth as the loosest in shape of the underworld books. The sun's boat (its "barque"), normally the thread that guides the eye through these texts, is largely absent, and even the division into registers (the horizontal bands the scenes sit in) is uncertain, so it reads more as a set of separate scenes than a single route. Its recurring concern is the renewal of the sun deep in the earth, set against the mourning for Osiris.

In Practice

The motif to hold onto is the sun journeying through Aker, the earth god drawn as a double sphinx (a pair of back-to-back lions) — an expanded form of the "barque of the earth" scene from the Book of Gates. In one scene two pairs of arms rise from Nun, the primeval waters of creation, around a huge sun disk on which the sun god's mummy stands between two fire-spitting cobras, ringed by a wreath of twelve stars and twelve small disks that marks the passing hours. Elsewhere fourteen ram-headed gods tow the boat, and a god called "he who hides the hours" stands in his cave among twelve star goddesses, while another twelve goddesses each carry the signs of a star and a shadow. Tatenen, god of the earth's depths, receives the boat below, and Nun releases it again — the sun's renewal set beside the grief for Osiris, as at the close of the Amduat.

Historical Origin

The Book of the Earth is a New Kingdom royal composition. Scenes belonging to it appear from Merneptah onward, but it survives in full only in the sarcophagus chamber of Ramesses VI, with later single scenes on Late Period coffins. Alexandre Piankoff founded its study (edition of 1953, parts A-D) and Friedrich Abitz added a part E. With no ancient title, modern names vary: Hornung's "Book of the Earth," Hartwig Altenmuller's "Book of Aker," and Winfried Barta's "Earth-Book." The study followed here is Hornung (1999).

Further Reading

• Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife