The Fifth Division

Source section: the Fifth Division of the Tuat, called Ament, in the Book of Am-Tuat Related: the Tenth Division · the Sixth Division · sokar · osiris · isis · ra · khepri · horus · ut-metu · her-khu · an-hetep · heru-hequi · the First Division · the Second Division · the Third Division · the Fourth Division · the Seventh Division · the Eighth Division · the Ninth Division · the Eleventh Division · the Twelfth Division

Overview

The fifth hour is called Ament, and it is where the Am-Tuat states its harshest idea in the mildest sentence.

Beside a long narrow lake called Netu the text is written twice, in two different orthographies, as if to make sure:

The gods who are in the Ammahet weep when the boat hath passed them by on its way to the Tuat… and the waters which are here are like unto fire to those who are in them. [budge-1905]

Not "these waters burn." Like unto fire to those who are in them — the quality is reported from inside. Four bearded human heads with masses of fire on top of them project from the surface; they are called the Blazing heads [budge-1905].

The division reports no gate, no city and no hour-goddess in its opening formula — the same silence as the Fourth. But it does name its exit: the way into the Sixth is a door in the lower register guarded by a serpent "who openeth it himself," beside a large five-rayed star.

The towing, and the four who march ahead

The boat is drawn by seven gods and seven goddesses. The legend over the gods is broken; the one over the goddesses survives:

These are the goddesses which tow Ra along in the Tuat over this Circle, and they make this great god to advance so that he may rest in Nu in the Tuat. [budge-1905]

Ahead of them march four "great sovereign chiefs who provide food in this Circle," apparently under the guidance of Isis of Amentet [budge-1905]:

The reply the towers make to Ra is one of the finest passages in the book, and half of it is broken away:

Is opened to thee the earth to such an extent that thou hast passed over the Beautiful Land, and the roads concerning which Ra hath spoken to thee, O Osiris. Thou criest out, O Ra, to the Land of Seker, and Horus hath life upon his sands. Come to Khepera, O Ra! Come to Khepera! Work ye with the cord, O ye who make Khepera to advance… Come in peace, in peace, O Ra of the Beautiful… [budge-1905]

The oval of Seker

At the centre of the division is a great oval described as "the hidden country of Sekri, which guardeth the hidden body" [budge-1905].

It rests on two man-headed lion sphinxes set tail to tail, of which only the heads and forequarters emerge, one at each end. Both are called Af, and of each it is said that he "has his existence from the voice of the great god," and that "his work is to keep ward over his image."

Inside the oval lies a monster serpent stretched almost full length: two snakes' heads at one end, a bearded human head at the other, and a pair of wings springing from the middle of its body. The text above the snake-heads is mutilated; the two words recoverable are neter aa — "great god."

The C267 test — CONFIRMED, and it also settles C270

The Fifth is a genuine test: it has both sides, in one speech, addressed by Ra to his own executioners.

Hail, ye who stand at the blocks of torture, and who keep ward at the destruction of the dead, ye whose voices have come into being for you, who have received your words of power, who are endowed with your souls, who sing hymns to the accompaniment of your sistra, who take vengeance on the enemies, who annihilate the dead, who hack in pieces shades [of men and women], who destroy and cut in pieces the dead, who avenge Osiris… provide ye yourselves with your slaughtering knives, fetter and bind with your hands this figure which is with you, so that I may journey past you in peace. [budge-1905]

The executioners are "endowed with your souls." Their victims have their shades hacked in pieces. Integration for the staff, separation for the condemned — in a single sentence, from a single speaker.

Elsewhere in the division the same divide holds: beings who follow Ra are with him "in their own bodies," while another group's work "is to burn up with fire the bodies of the dead" [budge-1905].

C267 now stands at four confirmations (Second, Fifth, Seventh, Twelfth), one proposal (Third), two consistent-but-not-tests (First, Fourth). Seven divisions examined; no refutation.

The same passage also settles C270 — that the Tuat's punitive registers are staff rather than enemies. These are torturers who sing hymns to the sistrum and are described as endowed, empowered and voiced. And the lake's gods weep when Ra's boat leaves, exactly as both registers of the Third do. Ra addresses his executioners with Hail.

The C294 test — HIT, the second efficacy clause

The executioners' address ends:

Whosoever knoweth this shall pass by the goddess in peace. [budge-1905]

That is the second such clause in the corpus, after the Seventh Division's promise that whoever utters the words of power "shall become one of those who are in the boat of Ra, both in heaven and upon earth" (C293).

Two divisions, two direct addresses to a reader who knows, each offering safe passage as the reward. Against C281 — the dead stop at hour one — and C298 — the dead take Re-stau instead — the picture sharpens: the Am-Tuat repeatedly offers its benefits to whoever has the knowledge, and the knowledge is what is being sold. Batch 66's failed prediction (C304) was about which division would carry one, not about whether the pattern exists. It does.

The C299 test — PRESENT

Two gods in the Fifth have their heads turned. The distribution is now:

Four and three. Per C299 no new hypothesis is being fitted to this — the towing explanation died last batch and one more data point does not license a replacement. Recorded and left open, with two divisions to go.

The C302 test — a fourth acoustic mechanism

The sphinxes flanking Seker's oval "have their existence from the voice of the great god" [budge-1905].

Not addressed by it, not summoned by it — constituted by it. That joins the Seventh (the boat advances on Isis' recitation), the Fourth (the doors do not open but "hear his voice"), and the Eighth (each sealed Circle recorded by what it sounds like).

Four divisions, four distinct acoustic mechanisms: propulsion, passage, identification, and now creation. This is no longer a curiosity. It is worth its own page once the twelve are done.

A note on Ut-metu

Ut-metu stands here as a single god carrying a tree. In the First Division the same element appears as a formula across four figures — Ut-metu-Ra, Ut-metu-Tem, Ut-metu-Khepera, Ut-metu-Asar, which C290 read as one title crossed with a roster.

So the element does both. That is the epithet trap (C290, C300) in its genuinely ambiguous form: not a title mistaken for a name, and not a name mistaken for a title, but an element that is demonstrably used as both within one composition. Where Metes- looks like a door-formula only, Ut-metu has a standalone attestation. The entry should say so.

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Primary attestations

Sources

• [budge-1905] — Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I, pp. 85–115. Public domain, archived in sources-texts/. OCR. Several texts in this division are broken in the original, not merely in the scan — Budge marks the legend over the seven gods, Ra's address to them, and part of their reply as damaged, and the text above the winged serpent's heads as mutilated.

Open threads

• The Ammahet — named as the place whose gods weep, and not otherwise described.
• Two sphinxes both called Af, tail to tail, each guarding "his image." Af is also the name of the dead sun-god throughout the book. Establish whether this is the same Af or a homonym.
• Sekri vs Seker — Budge uses both spellings within two pages. And the Fourth's Seker is "on his sand" while here Horus "hath life upon his sands." Third instance of the sand formula, after the Third's Her-sha-f (C301 thread).
• Recover the broken legend over the seven gods, and Ra's address to them.
• Ut-metu as both standalone god and compound formula — update the entry.
• The four Blazing heads projecting from the lake: are they punished, or are they lamps? The text does not say, and the corpus has now seen fire used both ways (C266).
• The exit-serpent "who openeth it himself" — a self-opening door is unusual enough to check for parallels.

Art notes

• Historical plate: Seker's oval on the two tail-to-tail sphinxes, with the winged serpent inside. It is the visual centre of the whole first half of the book.
• New art: the lake Netu — four bearded heads on fire, projecting from still water, with the boat passing and the shore-gods weeping. The caption writes itself: the water is fire only to those in it.