Sokar

SOH-kar

egyptian: Skr

Definition

Sokar (Egyptian Skr) is the falcon-god of the Memphite necropolis — the burial-ground of the old capital Memphis — and a god of the dark, deep regions of the night-journey through the Duat, the Egyptian underworld. He is shown as a falcon-headed mummiform figure, and his best-known title is "he of Rosetau," the entrance-region into the underworld. He is closely tied to craftsmanship and the dead, and over time he merges with Ptah and Osiris into the combined funerary god Ptah-Sokar-Osiris.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read Sokar as one of the great chthonic — underworld — gods of the Memphite region, who rose from a craftsman-god into a major deity of death and the necropolis. In the geography of the night-journey he presides over a dark, sandy stretch of the Duat: in the New Kingdom Amduat, the "Land of Sokar" is the desolate fourth-hour region the sun-god's barque (boat) must be towed through.

In Practice

Sokar belongs to the funerary-astral side of Egyptian sky-religion: the sun and the dead travel through the night underworld, and Sokar owns one of its darkest stages. In the Pyramid Texts the deceased king is carried in the Sokar-boat — the henu-barque, a special funerary vessel set alongside the day-boat and night-boat of the Sun — and is even identified with the god: one spell has Horus "bearing you as Sokar." His epithet "he of Rosetau" ties him to the boundary-region where the living world passes into the hereafter; in the Coffin Texts' Book of the Two Ways that region holds the corpse of Osiris. For an Egyptian-tradition reading, Sokar marks the deep, sun-less hours of the underworld passage, the part of the cycle that is about death and renewal rather than visible sky.

Historical Origin

Sokar is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (Dynasties 5-6, c. 2400-2300 BCE), where the king is raised into the henu-barque of Sokar and equated with the god. His Rosetau region and Land-of-Sokar fourth hour are elaborated in the New Kingdom Amduat (Hornung 1999). He is treated in Faulkner, *The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts* (Oxford 1969); Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003); and Hornung, *The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife* (Cornell 1999).

Further Reading

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