The Tenth Division

Source section: the Tenth Division of the Tuat, called Metet-qa-utchebu, in the Book of Am-Tuat Related: ra · horus · osiris · nu · the First Division · the Second Division · the Third Division · the Fourth Division · the Fifth Division · the Sixth Division · the Seventh Division · the Eighth Division · the Ninth Division · the Eleventh Division · the Twelfth Division

Overview

The tenth hour gives its full name-triple, as the Seventh and Twelfth do. The door is Aa-kherpu-mes-aru. The city is Metet-qa-utchebu. The hour is Tentenit-uheset-khak-abu [budge-1905].

And its subject is people in water.

In the lower register are five lakes, and in each one a submerged male figure. Budge's rendering of their collective name is plain: they are "the submerged." Ra addresses them, and what he promises is not what an English reader expects an underworld to offer a drowned man:

for your members shall not perish, and your flesh shall not decay, and ye shall have dominion over your water, and ye shall have abundance according to my command, O ye whose duty it is to dwell in Nu, together with those who have plunged themselves beneath the waters, and are in his following, and whose souls have life. [budge-1905]

Two things in that. "Those who have plunged themselves beneath the waters" — plunged themselves; these are not accidents. And the promise is specifically that submersion will not do to them what water does: the flesh will not decay.

Egyptian religion treated drowning in the Nile as a distinguishing death rather than a disaster, on the Osirian model. This division is where that idea is operating, and the god's answer to it is preservation.

The middle register

The boat carries the god under the canopy of Mehen, holding the symbol of life in his right hand and a serpent used as a sceptre in his left.

Ahead of it lies Thes-heau, a large two-headed serpent bent into the shape of a pair of deeply curved horns meeting at the tips. The head facing right wears the White Crown and looks directly into the face of the goddess Hert-erment, also in the White Crown. The head facing left wears the Red Crown and faces the goddess Shemerti — "She of the two bows." Within the curve sits a large hawk, Heru-khenti [budge-1905].

The serpent has two pairs of legs, one pair turned right and one left. That is the second legged serpent in the book, after the human-headed one with two pairs of human legs in the Fourth Division.

Then a boat in which the serpent Ankh-ta lies at full length.

The souls they swallow

One passage in the upper register resists reading, and it is recorded here unresolved.

Of four goddesses — two emerging from the double serpent Manenui, two from the axe Setfit:

They gather together the souls on earth, and they make pure the mighty spirits in the Tuat by the hidden figures which are therein, and [afterwards] they swallow their own spirits (or, souls) after this great god hath passed them by. [budge-1905]

Budge hedges the key word — spirits (or, souls) — and offers no comment on what the act means. Beings who purify others and then consume their own souls is not a motif this corpus has met elsewhere. Left open.

Two goddesses coming out of a double serpent and two out of an axe is itself worth noting: the fabrication category (C230, C280) again, with an implement as a source of gods.

The eight goddesses who do the arithmetic

Eight goddesses stand in this division, and Budge names all eight twice — in the Book of Am-Tuat and again, differently spelled, in Gods of the Egyptians. They divide four and four by their heads:

Four lionesses and four women, drawn up in matching ranks. With them is an ape-god, Af(?)-ermen-maat-f, and a serpent whose stiffened tail forms his seat and who holds the utchat — the eye of the sun — on his two hands.

And the eight have a job, which is the useful part:

To these goddesses who make the reckoning of his Eye for Horus, Ra saith: "Make ye strong your spirits by means of [your] strength, and make the…" [budge-1905]

They are counting the Eye. The utchat is the eye that was torn apart and put back together, and its fractions are the Egyptian notation for parts of a whole. Eight goddesses performing "the reckoning of his Eye" in the presence of a serpent who holds that eye in both hands is not decoration — it is the arithmetic of the Eye given a staff of eight, at the tenth hour of the night, one hour before dawn.

Two names, two spellings, one roster

usit and themath sat in the census as bare "a goddess in Duat" stubs for many batches (C317). They are fourth in each rank of this eight. The Am-Tuat writes Usrit and Themath-ermen (?); Gods of the Egyptians writes Usit and Themath. Neither stub could be found by name, because the corpus was searching for one spelling of a name that is only ever printed as part of a list — the case for reading by set, not by name (C362).

The C267 test — CONFIRMED, a sixth time

Both halves, in one division.

Punishment, of the same beings who serve Ra: "They strip the bodies of the dead of their swathings and break in pieces the bodies of the enemies [of Ra], and they give the order for their destruction in the Tuat" [budge-1905].

Blessing, to the drowned: "your members shall not perish, and your flesh shall not decay… whose souls have life" [budge-1905].

And in the same passage as the punishment, the blessed are described as those who "unite themselves and come into life in the shades which are in the mouth of the great god, and their souls journey onwards in his train to the horizon."

Members that do not perish, flesh that does not decay, souls that live and travel — against bodies broken in pieces. Integration is the reward; dismemberment is the punishment. Sixth confirmation.

C267 final tally across the complete Am-Tuat: six confirmations (Second, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Tenth, Twelfth), one proposal (Third), two consistent-but-not-tests (First, Fourth), three divisions not yet read out in full for this purpose (Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh — written before the test existed). No refutation anywhere.

The C299 test — absent

No reversed heads in the Tenth. Final distribution across the twelve:

Four present, five absent, three unexamined (Eighth, Ninth, Eleventh — written before the question was asked). The book is complete and the distribution still has no explanation. One hypothesis was tried and refuted (C299); none has been fitted since, on the grounds that a pattern built on six points would have lasted about as long as the one built on five.

That is the honest end state: a real, recorded, unexplained distribution. The three unexamined divisions are the obvious next check, and they are cheap — the text is already archived.

The C294 test — silent

No efficacy clause in the Tenth. The count stands at three — Fifth, Sixth, Seventh — clustered in the middle of the night and absent from both ends. Recorded as a silence, and as a small pattern worth noting: the offers to the living reader occur in the deep hours, not at the entrance or the dawn.

The C302 test — recurrence

"When this great god crieth out to them" [budge-1905] — the same address-and-response device as the Fourth and Sixth. Recorded as a recurrence. Distinct acoustic functions remain four: propulsion (Seventh), passage (Fourth, Sixth, Tenth), identification (Eighth), creation (Fifth).

Passage-by-voice now has three instances. It is the book's most repeated acoustic device.

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The Am-Tuat is complete

All twelve divisions now have pages. First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth — read out of [budge-1905] division by division, with rosters, doors, city and hour names where the text gives them, and primary-attestation tables throughout.

What the sequence produced, beyond the rosters:

• C267, six confirmations and no refutation: **separation is the punishment,

integration is the reward**, and the Egyptians used one vocabulary for both.

• C294: three efficacy clauses show the book is addressed to a living reader

who can buy provisioning by knowing it — or by copying the drawing.

• C302: sound does four distinct jobs across five divisions.
• C275/C283: the Duat is inside Nut, entered at hour one, left at hour twelve.
• C298: the dead do not stop at hour one; they take Re-stau, their own road.
• C266: the hours are not interchangeable — doors, four boats, a convoy, no

river, a lake of fire, midnight, magic, sealed Circles, linen and speech, the drowned, itemised fire, a serpent's body.

The name of the hour — and the set it belongs to

The hour-name given above is one of seven. Every division of the Am-Tuat is meant to close with a three-part formula — gate, city, hour of the night — and 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.

The seven are the Second, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth. They are collected on nebt-usha — the Eighth's hour, and the only one of the seven the census ever had, which is why she reached this corpus as "a goddess" with the fact that she is an hour stripped off.

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Primary attestations

Sources

• [budge-1905] — Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I, pp. 207–232. Public domain, archived in sources-texts/. OCR. Budge marks his own uncertainty on spirits (or, souls) in the Setfit passage.

Open threads

• The swallowed souls. Goddesses who purify others and then consume their own souls. No parallel in this corpus. Budge hedges the word and does not comment.
• The drowned as a category. Establish, from a source outside Budge, whether "those who plunged themselves beneath the waters" is the Osirian drowning-blessing attested elsewhere, and whether it is voluntary.
• Two goddesses from a serpent and two from an axe — add to the fabrication dossier (C230/C280) with Ur-hekau and the crook of Osiris.
• Legged serpents, now two: Thes-heau here (two pairs) and the human-headed one in the Fourth (two pairs of human legs). Find a plate or a parallel.
• Shemerti, "She of the two bows" — the Nine Bows are Egypt's traditional enemies; establish whether the name is related.
• Read the Eighth, Ninth and Eleventh out again for C267, C299 and C302. They were written before those tests existed and are the cheapest remaining check in the whole book.

Art notes

• Historical plate: Thes-heau, the two-headed four-legged serpent curved like horns, with a crowned goddess facing each head and a hawk inside the curve. It is the most heraldic composition in the book.
• New art: the five lakes. A man submerged in each, face up, and the text promising his flesh will not decay. Still water, five figures, no violence — the gentlest punishment-shaped image in the Am-Tuat that turns out not to be a punishment at all.