The First Division

Source section: the First Division of the Tuat, called Net-Ra, in the Book of Am-Tuat Related: the Tenth Division · the Sixth Division · the Fifth Division · the Fourth Division · the Seventh Division · the Second Division · ra · osiris · khepri · neith · sekhmet · maat · nut · wepwawet · unta · maa-a · the Third Division · the Eighth Division · the Ninth Division · the Eleventh Division · the Twelfth Division

Overview

The first hour of the night is about getting in.

Almost every being in it is defined by an opening. Nine apes are "the gods who open the gates to the Great Soul." Twelve goddesses are "the goddesses who unfold the portals in the earth." The division's two long texts are a speech in which Ra demands that doors be opened and a speech in which the gods reply that they are [budge-1905].

Nothing is fought here and nothing is punished. The entire hour is a door being answered.

Budge gives the Field's name two ways in the same passage — "The name of this Field is Maati" and "Net-Ra is the name of this Field" — with Arnebaui named as its guardian [budge-1905]. The court is two hundred and twenty measures long and the water three hundred.

Two boats, and a river between

The middle section is split lengthwise by a river.

Above it runs the Sektet boat — the boat of the afternoon — carrying Af, the dead sun, ram-headed and disked, inside his shrine. Before the shrine stand Ap-uat, Sa, and "the Lady of the Boat." Behind it five gods: Heru-Hekenu, Ka-Shu ("the double of Shu"), Nehes ("the Look-out"), Hu, and the steersman Kherp [budge-1905].

On the prow hangs an object Budge says is "a carpet by some, and a reed mat by others" — an honest note on a thing nobody could identify.

Marching ahead of the boat: the two Maat goddesses, one for the South and one for the North; Nekent-f with a spear; Khenti Amentet in the White Crown; Sekhmet, lioness-headed; the ram-headed Sehetch-ur; then four Terms — Ut-metu-Ra, Ut-metu-Tem, Ut-metu-Khepera, Ut-metu-Asar — and the company's leader Tcha-Unnut, with the serpent Sa upright on its tail beside him.

Below the river is a second boat, with a beetle at its centre: the Boat of the Birth of Osiris. Beside the beetle a god kneels toward the prow with his head turned behind him — see the note on posture below. Ahead march four man-headed and two hawk-headed gods each holding a serpent, Nabti with a crook in each hand, Neith of the South and Neith of the North, and the goat-goddess Artet. The hawk-headed pair are Tchatui and Meti.

The text on this lower boat contains the hour's one hard sentence:

The god cometh to this Court, he passeth through it in the form of a ram, and he maketh his transformations therein. After he hath passed through this Court, the dead who are in his following do not go with him, but they remain in this Court. [budge-1905]

The dead can enter the first hour. They cannot go further. Whatever the twelve hours are for, the ordinary dead travel one of them.

Nines and twelves

The registers are built on two numbers, and once you see it the whole division looks like a schema:

Nine, twelve, nine, nine, twelve. The first hour is not a landscape with inhabitants; it is an arrangement.

Note what the twelve serpents are for. In the Eleventh Division fire is punishment, itemised by what it burns. Here twelve serpents breathe fire to light the room. Third division now in which fire is functional rather than punitive — see C266.

The two speeches

The First Division's real content is an exchange, and there is nothing else like it in the Am-Tuat.

Ra speaks first, and what he says about the gods he is addressing is remarkable:

O ye who came into being from my members… Ye are made of my bodies, I have made you, having fashioned you of my soul. I have created you, I have made you by means of my enchantments… Open to me the doors with your hands, O ye Apes, unfold to me the portals of the Courts, O ye Apes, and welcome the gods who have come into being from my divine Souls. [budge-1905]

The gods answer:

O great god, the doors are opened to thee, and the portals of the secret Ament are thrown open before thee, the doors of Nut the great are thrown wide open… The Apes open the doors to thee, the Apes unfold to thee the portals, the serpents sing and exalt thee, and the divine serpents lighten thy darkness for thee… the goddess of the hour cometh to thee, the two Soul-Goddesses tow thee along in thy form… Thou hast taken possession of the night, and thou wilt bring in the day. [budge-1905]

Two things follow from this.

First: the doors of the Tuat are the doors of Nut. The gods say so directly. That is independent support for what the Twelfth Division states at the other end of the night — the god rises "from the thighs of Nut." The night journey enters her at hour one and leaves her at hour twelve. See nut.

Second: these gods are manufactured, and Ra says so. Not begotten, not emanated — made, "of my bodies," "of my soul," "by means of my enchantments." This is the clearest statement yet for the fabrication category (C230): the Egyptians had a vocabulary for gods as products, and it sits in the mouth of the creator without embarrassment.

The C267 test — consistent, but not decisive

The prediction (C267) is that body/ba/shadow language runs integrated in blessed contexts and separated in punitive ones.

The First Division was searched for the full punitive vocabulary. It returns no hacking of souls, no restraint of shadows, no pieces, no knives. Its soul language is entirely constitutive: gods "fashioned of my soul," gods who came into being "from my divine Souls," the "Great Soul," the "two Soul-Goddesses." Souls here are what gods are made of.

The "place of destruction" is mentioned once, and only as something Ra is asked to provide for — not described, not itemised.

So the division is consistent with C267 and does not test it. There is no punitive register here to supply the contrasting half. That matters: the Twelfth was a real confirmation because absence of punishment and assertion of intactness appeared together; the First offers only the absence. A case that cannot refute a claim is not evidence for it. Logged as consistent, not as support.

Reversed heads again (C277)

The god beside the beetle in the lower boat kneels toward the prow "having his head turned behind him" [budge-1905].

That is the third division to specify the posture — after the goddesses Seh and Ahau in the Third and all twenty-four towers in the Twelfth. Three divisions, three unrelated roles: a sceptre-bearer, a towing crew, and a passenger beside a beetle.

The common factor is not the job. In the Twelfth the towers look back at the boat they are pulling; here the figure kneels toward the prow but faces back toward the beetle. In both cases the reversed head points at the thing being moved or born. That is a hypothesis, not a reading — the Third's two goddesses do not obviously fit it. Marked testable; check every remaining division.

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Primary attestations

Sources

• [budge-1905] — Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I, pp. 3–20. Public domain, archived in sources-texts/. Budge bases the hieroglyphic text on Lefébure and Champollion, and cites Dümichen pl. iii for three ape-name variants (Besi, Tuai, Abti). OCR damage costs two of the twelve goddesses' names and three of the nine singing apes'.

Open threads

• The dead stop here. "They remain in this Court" — establish whether this restriction is stated anywhere else, and who then does travel the remaining eleven hours.
• Recover the two missing goddess names and the three missing singing-ape names from Dümichen pl. iii or Lefébure.
• Budge names the Field Maati and Net-Ra two sentences apart. Determine whether these are two names for one Field or a scribal/translation slip.
• What is the object on the prow — carpet, reed mat, or something else? Budge reports the disagreement without resolving it.
• Sekhet or Sekhmet? Budge notes the name "is written here Sekhmet" against his expected Sekhet. Check against sekhmet.
• The four Terms (Ut-metu-Ra, -Tem, -Khepera, -Asar) — ut-metu appears to be a title applied to four different gods. Establish what it means; this is the pattern C212 asks about.
• Test C277 — the reversed head as pointing at the thing moved or born.

Art notes

• Historical plate: the two boats with the river between them, the nine apes and twelve goddesses ranked above.
• New art: the twelve uraei breathing fire to light a dark room. Fire as a lamp rather than a punishment is the visual inversion of the Eleventh Division, and the two images should be built to be read against each other.