The Third Division

Source section: the Third Division of the Tuat, called Net-neb-ua-kheper-aut, in the Book of Am-Tuat Related: the Tenth Division · the Sixth Division · the Fifth Division · the Fourth Division · the Seventh Division · the First Division · the Twelfth Division · osiris · horus · khnum · anubis · sokar · hapi · ba-khati · hun-sahu · neter-neferu · the Eighth Division · the Ninth Division · the Eleventh Division

Overview

Correction, 2026-07-30 — the convoy is not unique to this hour

This page originally opened by saying that in every other hour the sun-god travels alone. That is wrong. The Second Division has a procession of four boats, one hour earlier, and it was written before this page was checked against it. See C284.

What survives is narrower: the Third is the hour in which the convoy's purpose is stated — "he paddleth Osiris to this City" — and in which each boat is named, crewed and steered individually. The Second's four boats carry cult objects and divine forms rather than towing a passenger.

In the third hour the sun-god travels in a convoy. Three other boats go ahead of him, each with its own name, its own crew and its own steersmen, and the text says plainly what he is doing with them: "he paddleth Osiris to this City" [budge-1905].

That is the distinguishing fact of this division and it is easy to miss under the roster. The Third Division is the hour in which the night journey stops being one god's passage and becomes a towing operation.

Budge renders the division's name Net-neb-ua-kheper-aut as "the Water of the Lord One, the Creator of food" [budge-1905].

The four boats

The sun-god's boat has changed. Af — the dead sun, ram-headed, in his shrine — now has a crew of only four mariners, two fore and two aft, with the goddess of the hour and a hawk-headed form of Horus who is tying loops of rope to the rowlocks so the paddles can be worked [budge-1905]. Someone is rigging the boat while it moves.

Ahead of him go three:

Read the first name again. The lead boat of the convoy is called "the boat which capsizes." Budge gives no comment on it and the text does not explain it. Whatever it means, the Egyptians put it at the front.

Note also the pairing of names in the first boat: a steersman called Fiery face and a steersman called Nab-hra, which Budge says "bears a name of similar meaning" [budge-1905]. And in the second and third boats, two serpents whose names differ by one element — Set-em-ura-f and Set-em-maat-f. The flotilla is built out of rhyming pairs, not out of unrelated figures.

Who meets them

The procession is met by four forms of Osiris, standing with the upper part of their bodies swathed: Neb-net, Meni, Ari-tcheru, and Maa-tcheru [budge-1905].

Osiris is in this hour at least three times over — once being ferried in the Boat of Rest, once as horned Shefshef in the Branch, and four more times standing on the bank to meet himself arriving. Then eight further times in the lower register (below). The Third Division contains at least fifteen Osirises.

The upper register — the ones who weep

Twenty-six figures, of whom the text says something remarkable:

Those who are in this picture in the Tuat have the flesh of their own bodies, and their souls speak over them, and their shadows are united unto them, and after this great god hath addressed them, they speak to him, and they say words of praise to him, and they weep after he hath passed them by. [budge-1905]

Their work in Amentet is "to take vengeance upon the Seba fiend of Ra, to make Nu to come into being, to make [Hapi] to flow" [budge-1905] — these are the beings who start the inundation. See hapi.

Among them: two dog-headed apes, Her-sha-f ("He who is on his sand," seated on a mass of sand) and Tcheb-netek, seated in a vaulted coffer; two jackal-headed gods, Anpu and Nehem-kheru; a man and woman, Anth ("He who brings") and Antet ("She who brings"), each holding a pupil of the Eye of Horus; the ram Sma-kheftiu-f; the mummy Pet-ahat; Anubis of Thebes as a jackal couchant on a pylon; a kneeling man called Ak-maat-Ra-sehetep-neteru, "the bringer of the Eye of Ra, who maketh content the gods"; and the papyrus sceptre Ur-hekau, "Great one of words of power," surmounted by a piece of flesh — an object, listed among gods.

Then four gods — Sah-ab, Thema, Hun-sahu, Thet-em-kerh; four mummied forms — Peba-f, Auai, Ka-aru, Teba; and four goddesses, Hait and Kemit among them, who Budge says "as their names testify, were professional mourners" [budge-1905]. Last: Heru-kheti followed by the Hennu standard — the hawk of Sokar — and the gods Meh-Maat and Neter-neferu.

The lower register — the ones who dismember

Also twenty-six, and the text about them is the opposite of the text above:

The work which they have to do in Ament is to hew and to hack souls in pieces, and set restraint upon shadows, and to destroy such doomed beings as have their being in their place of destruction which blazeth with fire… They wail and they lament when this great god hath passed them by. [budge-1905]

The register opens with Khnemu, ram-headed, and Nerta, a bearded man with hands raised in adoration. Then four Osirises in the White Crown, seated on chairs of state: Osiris lord of Amentet, Osiris at the head of Amentet, Osiris of the two seats, and Osiris conqueror of millions of years.

Then five goose-headed beings each holding a knife — Neha-hra, Akebsen, Atemti, Tuatui, and one unnamed. Then Sepaashat, holding a knife in both hands, between two women, Meskh-set and Tept-bes-s; the bearded Amenti; and four more Osirises, these in the Red Crown: Asar-ka-Amentet, Asar-her-khentu-f, Asar-batti (reading uncertain), and Asar-kherp-hetepu.

Then two goddesses, Seh and Ahau, grasping a sceptre in both hands with their heads turned backwards; the goddess Ba-khati, holding an eye of Horus in each hand; the god Khetra, whom the text names as "the warder of this Field"; and finally three gods with bowed backs who touch the earth with their hands.

What the two registers are for

This is the finding that makes the division worth reading closely.

The upper register's beings have their flesh, their souls speak over them, and their shadows are united unto them. The lower register's beings hack souls in pieces and set restraint upon shadows.

The same three components — body, ba, shadow — appear in both texts, once integrated and once taken apart. The Egyptians are using the same vocabulary to describe the reward and the punishment, and the difference between them is entirely whether the parts are together or separated.

That reframes what the Eleventh Division is doing when it itemises its pits — souls in one fire, shades in another, heads in a third. It had looked like bureaucratic thoroughness. Read against the Third, it is the punishment itself: the pits are not sorting the damned, they are holding the pieces of them apart.

This is a testable reading, and the test is the remaining nine divisions. If soul/shadow/body language turns up integrated in blessed contexts and separated in punitive ones elsewhere, it holds. See C267.

One thing both registers share, and it is not what you would expect: both groups grieve when Ra leaves. The upper register "weep after he hath passed them by"; the lower "wail and lament" at the same moment. The torturers and the blessed have the same reaction to the end of the hour.

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Primary attestations

Sources

• [budge-1905] — Budge, The Book of Am-Tuat (1905), vol. I, pp. 44–60. Public domain, archived in sources-texts/. OCR; hieroglyphic transcriptions in the scan are unreliable and several readings below are Budge's own uncertain ones (he marks Asar-batti with a query).

Open threads

• Why is the lead boat called "the boat which capsizeth"? Budge translates and moves on. Nothing in the division explains a name that ought to be alarming at the head of a convoy.
• The four professional mourners — Budge names only Hait and Kemit of the four. Recover the other two.
• The fifth goose-headed knife-bearer is unnamed in the text; check whether the plates carry it.
• Confirm Tent-baiu as the hour-goddess's name and establish whether she appears elsewhere.
• Locate the district of Thettu — Budge does not gloss it here.
• Establish what Ur-hekau is doing in a register of gods. A sceptre topped with flesh, listed and named among deities, is a case of the fabrication question (C230).
• Test the register reading against the other nine divisions (C267).

Art notes

• Historical plate: the three boats in line ahead — the capsizing boat, the boat of rest, the branch — with the sun-god's shrine following. Budge's plates carry all three.
• New art: the rigging detail. A hawk-headed Horus tying rope loops to elongated hawk-headed rowlocks while the boat is under way. It is the one moment of ordinary labour in the entire night journey.