The Litany of Re is a royal funerary composition of the New Kingdom, centred upon the sun god Re and the deceased king’s transformation and union with him. Its ancient title can be translated approximately as “The Book of Adoring Re in the West” ;the “West” being the realm of the dead. Its best-known section...
Hidden deep within the ochre cliffs of the Valley of the Kings lies one of Ancient Egypt’s most breathtaking royal sepulchres: the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I, who reigned during the 19th Dynasty around 1290–1279 B.C. Known to modern Egyptologists as KV17, this tomb is not only among the longest and most exquisitely decorated, but...
When Re was in the underworld, he merged with Osiris, the god of the dead, and through it became the god of the dead as well. The union of the gods Re and Osiris (in the guise of a ram-headed mummy which wears the sun’s disk between its horizontal, corkscrew horns). The “Amduat”, like the...
It is composed of the globe of the sun, inside which are carved the sun god in two of his guises: his dawn form Khepri, the scarab beetle, and his night form, the ram-headed Re. The scene from the tomb of Seti II is shown the central image of the title illustration associated with the...
