The Second Division
Status: ◐ partial (2026-07-30) · Badge: New Kingdom
Source section: the Second Division of the Tuat, called Urnes, in the Book of Am-Tuat Related: the Tenth Division · the Sixth Division · the Fifth Division · the Fourth Division · the Seventh Division · ra · osiris · isis · nephthys · hathor · khnum · thoth · anubis · wepwawet · maat · amu-aa · the First Division · the Third Division · the Eighth Division · the Ninth Division · the Eleventh Division · the Twelfth Division
Overview
The second hour is called Urnes, and the sun-god enters it with an escort of four boats, each carrying a different god and each built differently.
The boat of Af is unchanged from the first hour — same crew, same positions — with two additions and two subtractions. Two serpents named Isis and Nephthys now occupy the front, immediately before Ap-uat. The carpet-or-mat is gone from the bows and the utchat is gone from the side [budge-1905].
And the boat has no visible means of propulsion. Budge notes it carefully: it "moves over the waters by means of some power exerted either by itself or by some of the gods who stand in it."
The four boats
| Boat | Ends | Carries |
|---|---|---|
| First | bearded human heads; sides marked with the sign for "heaven" and the utchat | the full moon — a disk in a crescent on a support divided into thirteen sections, one per day, so the disk is the moon of the fourteenth day. A god kneels beside it "supporting Maat," shown as a feather. Its prow is named Urer; over the stern, "Field of him that beareth up Urnes" |
| Second | bearded human heads, each surmounted by a pair of plumes | a huge sistrum between two goddesses — the boat of Hathor, or Hathor-Isis. In the fore part a beetle described as "This great god Neper." Over one plumed head, "Osiris crieth to it" |
| Third | prow crowned with the Crown of the South, stern with the Crown of the North; between them the two sceptres of Anpu and Ap-uat | a huge lizard, from whose back spring the head of Osiris and a White Crown |
| Fourth | uraeus heads, each turned inward toward the figure kneeling amidships | an armless woman kneeling between two armless men; an ear of wheat grows at each end. The boat of Neper, Osiris as the god of grain — "the boat which conveyeth Neper," and at the stern "collector of herbs and plants" |
Two of these are worth stopping on.
The lizard. A reptile with the head of Osiris growing out of its back, wearing the White Crown, sailing between the two jackal-sceptres and the two crowns of Egypt. Budge describes it and offers no interpretation, and neither will this page.
The armless three. A woman kneeling between two standing men, all three without arms, in a boat sprouting wheat. Whatever the armlessness means, it is deliberate and it is repeated three times in one hull.
Note also the moon-boat's arithmetic: thirteen marked sections and a full disk, which places the moon on day fourteen — the Egyptians drew the lunar month's waxing as a countable staircase and put the sun's escort on the step above it.
A correction — the convoy is not unique to the Third
The Third Division page states that in every other hour the sun-god travels alone, and that the third hour's three-boat convoy is what distinguishes it. That is wrong, and this division is the refutation. The Second has a procession of four boats, one hour earlier.
What survives of the observation is narrower and still worth having: the Third is the hour in which the convoy's purpose is stated — "he paddleth Osiris to this City" — and in which the boats are named and crewed individually. The Second shows the same formation carrying cult objects and divine forms rather than towing a passenger. Both pages have been corrected. Recorded as C284.
The upper register — six knives
The register opens with six gods in mummy form on chairs of state, each with a phallus in the form of a knife [budge-1905]:
1. Ast Netch-t, "Isis the avengeress" — a bearded god bearing a goddess's name 2. Seb-Qenbeti, "Seb of the two corners" 3. Khnemu Qenbeti, "Khnemu of the two corners" — ram-headed 4. Tehuti-her-khent-f, "Thoth on his steps" — ibis-headed 5. Afu-her-khent-f, "Afu on his steps" — ape-headed 6. Ketuit-tent-ba, "Cutter of the soul" — lioness-headed
The first is the strangest: a bearded god called Isis the avengeress. The sixth is the one that matters for the argument below.
The C267 test — confirmed, and this is the best case yet
The prediction (C267): body, ba and shadow are described as integrated for the blessed and separated for the damned; the itemisation of souls is the punishment rather than the bookkeeping.
The Second Division supplies both halves inside a single speech, and it states the integration not as a description but as a benefaction Ra is granting:
Open ye your hidden doors so that the god Af may look upon you and may throw aside your darkness… and that wind may come to your nostrils, and that ye may not be destroyed and overcome by your own foul odour, and that ye may not be choked by your own dung, and that ye may untie and cast away your swathings, and that ye may lift up your legs and walk upon them, and that ye may stretch out your arms, and that your souls may not be made to remove themselves from you. [budge-1905]
Read the last clause. The blessing being conferred is that the soul stays attached to the body. Not that the soul ascends, not that it is judged well — that it is not removed. C267 predicted that integration is the reward; here integration is explicitly the thing being given.
And the separating language appears in the same speech, aimed elsewhere. These same beings are "provided with your swords [whereby] ye may hack in pieces the enemies of Osiris" [budge-1905]. Hacking in pieces is what the blessed do to enemies. Dismemberment is the punishment; non-removal of the soul is the reward; both are stated by the same speaker to the same audience within a dozen lines.
This is a stronger confirmation than the Twelfth's, which rested on an absence. C267 now stands at two confirmations (Second, Twelfth), one proposal (Third), one consistent-but-not-a-test (First).
The lioness-headed "Cutter of the soul" in the register above sits in exactly the role the reading predicts — soul-severance personified as an office.
Also in that speech, more of the fabrication vocabulary that C280 identified in the First: these gods "have life through my soul, who have being through my bodies" [budge-1905].
The C282 test — negative
No reversed-head posture anywhere in the Second Division. Searched the whole range; nothing. The posture appeared in the First, Third and Twelfth and is absent here, which means it is not a general convention of the book but something used in particular divisions. That narrows the question usefully: it is a marked choice, not a house style.
The C281 test — silent
The Second says nothing about who travels and nothing about the dead remaining behind. The restriction stated in the First — "the dead who are in his following do not go with him" — is neither repeated nor contradicted here. A silence, recorded as a silence.
The blessings, and what they tell you about the fear
It is worth reading Ra's list on its own terms, because it is unusually concrete about what the Egyptian dead were afraid of:
Darkness. Thirst. Hunger. No air in the nostrils. Being destroyed by your own foul odour. Being choked by your own dung. Being unable to untie your own bandages. Being unable to stand, or to reach.
That is not a theological list. It is a list of what it would actually be like to be a conscious body in a sealed tomb — and every item on it is answered, one by one, by a god passing overhead once a night.
The name of the hour
Every division of the Am-Tuat is closed — or opened — with a three-part formula: the name of the gate, the name of the city, and the name of the hour of the night. The hours are goddesses, and they are named.
For the Second Division the source gives the hour only: Seshet-maket-neb-s.
The formula here is the short one — "The name of this hour is Seshet-maket-neb-s" — and it closes the chapter rather than opening it. Both archived scans garble the first element (Sesilet-, Sesiibt-), so the reading above is reconstructed from the shared letters and from the parallel with the Ninth's Tuatet-maketet-en-neb-s, which carries the same -maket-neb-s ending. Flagged as uncertain in its first element only.
All twelve hours are named — see the Names of the Hours. The Am-Tuat gives the formula in only seven of its divisions, which led this reference to conclude twice that the rest did not exist (C400, then C414). They are all in the Book of Gates summary, listed consecutively (C417). A bounded negative should trigger a wider search, not a narrower footnote.
Primary attestations
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[budge-1905] | Book of Am-Tuat I, Second Division, pp. 21–22 | division named Urnes; Af's crew unchanged from the First; serpents Isis and Nephthys at the front; carpet and utchat absent; no visible propulsion |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 22–24 | the moon boat — thirteen sections, the fourteenth-day disk, the god "supporting Maat"; prow Urer; "Field of him that beareth up Urnes" |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 24–25 | Hathor's boat — sistrum between two goddesses, the beetle "this great god Neper," "Osiris crieth to it" |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 25–26 | the lizard boat — crowns of South and North, sceptres of Anpu and Ap-uat, Osiris' head and White Crown springing from the lizard's back |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 26–27 | Neper's boat — armless woman between two armless men, wheat at both ends, Hept-mena-f-tua-uaa-f |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 27–28 | the six knife-phallus gods, incl. Ketuit-tent-ba, "Cutter of the soul" |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 41–42 | Ra's address: the blessings, "that your souls may not be made to remove themselves from you", and the swords that "hack in pieces the enemies of Osiris" |
[budge-1905] | ibid., p. 42 | "who have life through my soul, who have being through my bodies" — fabrication language (C280) |
[budge-1905] | ibid., pp. 42–43 | the boat Am-ta; rest in the Field of the Nepektiu gods, who follow Osiris |
Sources
[budge-1905]— Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I, pp. 21–43. Public domain, archived insources-texts/. OCR; the text above the moon boat is mutilated in the original and Budge marks several gaps in Ra's address with ellipses that are his, not the scan's.
Open threads
- The lizard with Osiris' head growing from its back. Budge describes and does not interpret. Find a parallel.
- The three armless figures in Neper's boat. Armlessness in Egyptian art is normally a mark of the bound or the punished; here it is in a vegetation boat. Establish the convention.
- A bearded god called "Isis the avengeress." Determine whether this is a scribal error, a deliberate composite, or a title detached from its usual owner.
- Qenbeti, "of the two corners," is applied to both Seb and Khnemu; her-khent-f, "on his steps," to both Thoth and Afu. Two titles, each shared by two gods — the C212 pattern again, now with four instances in two divisions.
- Neper appears twice in one division — as a beetle in Hathor's boat and as the owner of the fourth boat. One god or two uses of a word?
- The Nepektiu gods, in whose Field the boat comes to rest, are named once and not described.
- Recover the mutilated text above the moon boat.
Art notes
- Historical plate: the four boats in line — moon, sistrum, lizard, wheat. They are visually unlike each other in a way that reproduces well.
- New art: the lizard boat. A crowned Osiris head rising from a reptile's spine, between the two jackal sceptres. It is the least explicable image in the first half of the book and should be drawn exactly as described, without resolution.