Date: about 1075-945 B.C. (Third Intermediate Period, Dynasty 21)
Medium: papyrus, white paint, red and black ink
Provenance: probably from Thebes, Egypt
Dimensions: height 9”, length 40”
Accession number: 33-1398

Condition: fair. Damage at center of papyrus and edges, especially the top; white paint on scene to our right badly flaked.

Description. The dead were often buried with magical texts such as The Book of the Dead and The Book of What Is in the Underworld. A section of the latter appears here and was made for Nesneferher, the son of Nes. The papyrus joins two important scenes: Nesneferher meeting Osiris and the triumph of Ra in the Underworld. On our far right, the deceased, Nesneferher, has journeyed to the Underworld, where the gods have favorably judged his life and character. He now prays before the great god of the Underworld, Osiris. In the middle scene, the sun-god, Ra, grasps the wings of the serpent Apophis. Every night Ra voyages through the Underworld, where his rays resurrect the dead who have passed judgment. Each night Ra overcomes Apophis trying to halt him. In the next scene to the right, the snake-headed goddess Hepetethor lifts a snake and Ra. Ra had entered the snake to be reborn and now young, rises to give morning’s light to the world above. (Khnum and another deity are between Ra and the seated Osiris. Each of the four standing figures on the left side of the papyrus portray Osiris; before them is the two-headed god of time). Possessing these scenes magically ensured that the deceased met Osiris and that Ra regularly completed the voyage in which he resurrected the deceased.

The book and its history. The Book of What Is in the Underworld describes the voyage of Ra through the Underworld and his rebirth (Claggett 471-510; Piankoff 227-318; Hornung 1984, 59-194). The Underworld consisted of 12 zones; the sun occupied each for an hour. The book is divided into 12 chapters, one for each zone. The book seems to be an 18th Dynasty, New Kingdom creation (about 1539-1295/2 B.C.) and first appears painted on the walls of the tomb of Thutmosis I (about 1493-1479); the best and fullest text is on the walls of the tomb of Thutmosis III and Amenophis II. By the end of Dynasty 18, the text was out of fashion, but reappeared in the 19th and 20th Dynasties (about 1292-1075 B.C.) on the tomb walls of Seti I, Ramses II, Merneptah, Seti II, Tausert-Setnakht, Ramses III, Ramses VI, and Ramses IX (Piankoff 227-8; Hornung 1990, passim). It then appears on many non-royal papyri and coffins of the first millennium B.C. The Nelson-Atkins papyrus differs from other papyrus copies in two ways. Hepetethor is present, and the stars that should number 11 (one for each hour that the sun has passed in the Underworld) now number 15 to represent the night-sky (van Voss 1990, 1992).

Published: Matthieu Heerma van Voss, “Der Papyrus Kansas City 33-1398,” in L’Egitto fuori dell’ Egitto: Dalla riscoperta all’Egitologia, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, Bologna 26-29 Marzo 1990 (Bologna: Editrice Clueb), 451-4; Matthieu Heerma van Voss, “Zur Göttin Hepetethor,” in Intellectual Heritage of Egypt, Studies Presented to László Kákosy (Budapest: 1992), 265-6.

Other cited sources: Marshall Clagett, Ancient Egyptian Science: A Source Book I, 2 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1989); Erik Hornung, Ägyptische Unterweltsbücher (Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1984); Erik Hornung, The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of Eternity (New York: Timken Publishers, Inc., 1990); Alexandre Piankoff, Tomb of Ramesses VI, Bollingen Series 40, 1 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954).

Other useful sources: Andrzej Niwinski, Studies on the Illustrated Theban Funerary Papyri of the 11th and 10th Centuries B.C. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1989).

(RC)

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