The Amduat—The Book of the

Hidden Chamber

At the very end of the Valley of the Kings, at the edge of the Theban
Mountain that separates the endless desert from the fertile Nile valley,
there is a tomb. Once carefully hidden, its entrance is not, as usual, at the
base of the steep rock wall but rather some yards above the bottom of a
deeply fissured gorge. Today, visitors who brave the heat and the dust use a
flight of steps leading up to the entrance and the sloping corridor just be-
yond it. This is the tomb of Tuthmosis III, the mighty pharaoh who made
Egypt into a great world power. Deep within the mountain, at the end of
the tomb, is the burial chamber where the king once rested, surrounded
by the simple yet gorgeous copy of the Amduat decorating its walls. Let us
now trace the path that leads from the entrance to the burial chamber.
The walls of the first corridors we encounter are crudely chiseled
and without decoration. Our downward journey continues with a flight

Plan of the tomb of Tuthmosis III

15
 of steps that takes us into a first room (1), whose layout and decora-
tion attract our attention. Here, a shaft some twenty feet deep inter-
rupts our path, but a small bridge of modern construction enables us
to continue. In this room the ancient stonemasons worked carefully,
smoothing the walls and covering them with plaster. On the ceiling,
white-painted stars shine down from a dark blue background, creat-
ing an atmosphere of cosmic dimensions. Scholars have long debated
the mystery of this shaft. Some have suspected that it served to repel
those who would violate the tomb, calling it a “robbers’ shaft.” In Egypt,
however, architectural details had a symbolic meaning in addition to
their functional aspects. Others have proposed, therefore, that the shaft
marks a point of transition, a boundary hinting at the depths of the
netherworldly abyss out of which all life regenerates. In any event, this
room and its shaft serve as a threshold leading from this world to the
realm beyond, the realm of transformation from death to life. Though
it is modern, even the bridge is an age-old symbol of passage from one
world into another.
Leaving this room, we enter an irregular, almost rectangular-shaped
chamber containing two pillars (2). Again the blue ceiling is covered with
countless stars. The names of the various deities and demons depicted
on the walls, more than seven hundred in number, produce a mysterious
effect on the visitor. Soon, as our eyes grow accustomed to the dim light,
we make out, to our left, a small passage that leads down to the actual
burial chamber (3). The oval shape of this room creates a fascinating ef-
fect, one that is increased by the imposing sarcophagus decorated in red
with hieroglyphs and images. Precious burial gifts were once stored in
four subsidiary chambers, but these objects long ago fell into the hands
of robbers, who saw not its transcendent spiritual value but mere gold in
this treasure intended for the afterlife.
Once more the ceiling is painted with a starry sky. The walls are cov-
ered with countless deities, along with the textual commentary of the
Amduat, written in red and black cursive hieroglyphs. The fact that none
of the twelve hours of the night are missing (though they are not in
chronological order) is remarkable, for in many other tombs, this old-
est Book of the Netherworld is represented only by individual hours.
Working from a papyrus manuscript, the artisans of this tomb made a

16 The Amduat
large-scale copy of it on the walls of this chamber. Occasional spelling
errors betray their inability to read. The same mistakes occur in other
tombs, showing that the same manuscript was used in these cases as well.
The craft of the tomb artists consisted simply in copying the original text
as precisely as possible.
We have to read the illustrations in the burial chamber as we would a
book. Doing so, we accompany the Sungod Re and the crew of his barque
on their eventful, often dangerous, journey through the twelve hours
of the night. The middle register of the depiction of each hour begins
with the Sungod traveling in his boat, from left to right, along the river
of the netherworld. The scenes in this register represent, as we shall see
later, the central topic of the respective hour. Many deities surround the
Sungod, some escorting him in his barque, while others, whom we see in
the upper and lower registers, dwell on the banks of the netherworldly
stream. On these riverbanks, they come to life at Re’s appearance, express
their jubilation at the Great God whenever he passes, and then fall back
into the sleep of death when he sails out of sight at the end of the hour.
On his journey through the netherworld, the Sungod experiences a
profound process of physical and cognitive transformation, culminating
in his rebirth at the dawn of a new day. The Egyptians were deeply con-
vinced that whoever knows the details of this mysterious process—that
is, the truths we find recorded in the decoration of this very tomb—will
participate in the transfiguration from death to life that applies, first and
foremost, to the Sungod and to the king who lies buried here.
Two pillars in this burial chamber depict Tuthmosis and his fam-
ily and a tree goddess offering her nourishing breast to the king. In the
beauty and simplicity of this scene, we can feel the intense, almost mysti-
cal atmosphere of the chamber. And here we shall linger, reflecting on the
images and texts of the Amduat and their symbolism.
Of all the Books of the Netherworld, the Amduat (the name means
“that which is in the netherworld”) is the oldest, and in its layout and
content it is the clearest in its description of the voyage of the Sungod
through the twelve nocturnal hours. Exhausted from his daily work, the
god descends via the portal of the western horizon into the realm of the
dead. During his journey, he is accompanied by an ever-changing array
of deities and blessed dead who seek his proximity, to serve him in his

Book of the Hidden Chamber 17

Tree goddess offering life to Tuthmosis III
arduous journey, and to participate in the mystery of his regeneration. In
the Amduat, we see more than nine hundred of them on the two banks
of the river. Wherever the great god passes, they come alive to praise,
adore, and honor him and also to protect him from his omnipresent
enemies.
Everywhere there lurk demonic beings who threaten to destroy this
nascent life. Again and again, the progress of the journey is endangered,
above all by Apopis (or Apep), incarnation of evil per se, whose intent
is to use his dark power to annihilate the whole of creation. In the sixth
hour of the night, which is the deepest point of the netherworld and the
mythical border of the world and where the Sungod encounters the most
intense darkness and the direst danger, lies hidden the great mystery, the
corpse of the Sungod, which is also the corpse of Osiris. It is here, in this
absolute depth, that nonbeing, which is both life-threatening and salva-
tional, comes into contact with Osiris’s realm of the dead. And it is here
that the ineffable mystery of the union of the Sungod Re and Osiris, the
god of the netherworld, takes place.
This great mystery of the union between the freely moving ba-
soul of the Sungod, longing for the bright and boundless sky, with
Osiris’s corpse, which is irrevocably bound to the subterranean realm
of the dead, evokes the renewal of all life and the restoration of total-
ity. Now the journey to the portal of the east can continue. Hardly has
the Sungod regained a glimmer of new light in the depths when he is
threatened once more, this time by Apopis, who blocks his voyage in the
sun barque in the seventh hour. The united forces of the Sungod and his
entourage repel Apopis and all the enemies of Re. The following hours
depict the ascent of the barque and, along with it, the regeneration of
all creation. In the twelfth hour, just before the long-awaited rebirth of
the sun, the solar barque, with all the gods and all the “millions” of the
dead, is once more plunged into darkness. The boat enters the body of
a huge serpent via its tail and emerges from its mouth. As the images
and the accompanying texts make clear, the passage of the boat through
the body of the serpent leads to the transformation of the Sungod into
Khepri and to the ultimate rejuvenation of all beings.
Now nothing opposes the rebirth of the rejuvenated god. His near-
death weakness is shed, and darkness is conquered, illuminated by the

Book of the Hidden Chamber 19

 joy of all animate existence. The sky goddess Nut once again gives birth
to the Sungod, while Shu, god of the air, receives the solar barque and
elevates it into the eastern sky.
A sun hymn from the Late Period tomb of a state official expresses the
motif of pregnancy through death as follows:

Greetings to you, Re, at your rising . . .

Great falcon with adorned breast . . .
May you awake well in the early morning. . . .
Rejoicing rings out for you in the evening . . .
You, carried in pregnancy at night,
and awakening to your birth in the morning.
Your mother elevates you daily.1

“Your mother elevates you daily”—this statement reveals an adequate

and conscious approach to the psychic matrix of the collective uncon-
scious, for our consciousness is daily reborn from the maternal womb
of preconscious totality. From the deathlike state of sleep, we draw our
energy as well as our sense of continuity and duration. Just as Re, the
Sungod, descends to his corpse, we, too, return again and again to an
ancestral world where our creative potential lies hidden. Here our con-
sciousness regenerates, and with it our physical and mental skills—and,
not least of all, our capacity to feel love for our fellow human beings and
for all that exists.
The Amduat endeavors to fathom the mystery of regeneration. Its
focus is on Re’s immersion into the darkness of the netherworld and his
awakening, reborn, in the morning. But what does the Sungod repre-
sent psychologically? In general, a deity represents an archetypal power.
Therefore, it is not quite correct to say that Re’s life-generating sunlight
represents mere ego-consciousness. Rather, it points to an ultimate prin-
ciple of consciousness in the collective unconscious, a principle that serves
as the source of all consciousness. Already in the late third millennium
and the second millennium BC, deep love for the awakening of the world

1
J. Assmann, Sonnenhymnen in thebanischen Gräbern (Mainz: von Zabern, 1983), text 1, p. 1.
English translation by A.S.

20 The Amduat
illuminated by the sun spurred efforts to symbolize this awareness as
thoroughly as possible through the richness of Egypt’s solar theology.2 In
the Books of the Netherworld, and even more in the flourishing theology
of the Ramesside era that followed, the Sungod was viewed as the spiri-
tual father, creator, and driving force of everything that exists. In his reli-
able and reassuring way, he guaranteed the cosmic and even the political
order, for which reason Maat, embodiment of cosmic order and justice,
was rightly called Re’s daughter.
When Re created the world on the “first occasion,” and everything
came into being, he “built himself,” as the texts put it, taking on existence
for no stated reason. Similarly, we cannot say why something in us desires
an expansion of our consciousness, or, in other words, why it is that an
ultimate principle of consciousness exists in the collective unconscious.
Even less do we know why this yearning for consciousness emerged so
forcefully into the foreground of cultural expression in the second mil-
lennium BC. In the meantime, humankind has experienced an increas-
ing development of consciousness, though I would not dare to assert
that this process has been only for the good. Quite the contrary, we are
increasingly aware of the doubtful, even dangerous, aspect of cultural
development. We cannot turn back the history of evolution, but we are
well advised, at least, to turn our backs on any optimistic, naive belief in
progress, which is more a matter of wishful thinking than of reality. Our
duty is not to progress, but rather to serve ongoing change, for all life, all
existence, is longing for transformation.
The Egyptians expressed this point in a beautiful way. Humans could
not make demands on the Sungod, for any sort of healing and transfor-
mation is granted only by divine grace; but the theologians knew that each
of them could, as one of “the blessed dead,” with a birdlike and thus freely
moving ba-soul, take his or her place in the solar barque and thus par-
ticipate in the destiny of the Sungod, in his journey over the celestial ocean
and through the regions of the netherworldly hereafter. Participating

2
A similar development took place in Mesopotamia during the late third and the second
millennia, as demonstrated most beautifully in the Gilgamesh epic. See A. Schweizer,
Gilgamesch: Von der Bewusstwerdung des Mannes. Eine religionspsychologische Deutung
(Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1991), and Das Gilgamesch-Epos: Die Suche nach dem Sinn
(Munich: Kösel, 1997).

Book of the Hidden Chamber 21

 thus in the Sungod’s renewal, each of the blessed dead was embedded in
his unending, creative process of transformation.
The psychological meaning is this: I can share in the ultimate, arche-
typal power of consciousness, which belongs to the objective psyche, but
I can never summon it forth by my own deeds or efforts. Rather, true
consciousness originates in an illuminatio, an illumination, that comes
to me through intimacy with the divine or with archetypal content. This
is the psychological truth of Jesus’s words:

I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness
but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

22 The Amduat