All of the figures within the scene face the head of Nut, and so the end of the book. The scene and captions of this book are arranged under the figure of the sky goddess Nut, with her arms and legs spread out. In 1942, Alexandre Piankoff published and edition of the book but without regard to the Tanis versions. Also related are the hymns to the hours of the day in the pronaos of the Edfu Temple.Ĭhampoliion originally copied versions of the book from the sarcophagus chamber and corridors of the tomb of Ramesses VI, but they received little attention. Otherwise, only brief components of the text regarding the hours of the day have been discovered on sarcophagi and papyri of the Late Period. The latest version of the book we have is from the private tomb of Ramose (TT132) that dates from the 25th Dynasty. The Book of the Day, though found in the royal necropolis at Tanis, along with excerpts from the tomb of Osorkon II and a nearly complete version in the tomb of Shoshenq III, is also depicted within the tomb of Ramesses VI. The dispute is settled by their father, Shu, who advises that the Nut give birth to the stars each time so they might live. In the cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos, we find a text reporting a quarrel between Geb and Nut because she is swallowing their children, the stars. The text labeled Dd through Ff explain migratory birds and their nests. These captions tell us the decans work and their periodic invisibility, including their transit through the meridian. A list of decans that may originate in the Middle Kingdom are provided in Texts S through X. They have no boundaries or cardinal directions. For example, Text L provides a definition of the "far regions of the sky", that are in the primeval darkness and waters, not touched by the sun. Neugebauer set out and coded the various captions within the depiction. The brief captions augment this understanding and are distributed over the entire scene, describing its details as well as the actions of the sun god, the decans and other divine beings. The book is intended to provide both a topography of the sky and an understanding of the sun's daily course.
The captions on the scene are also accompanied by a longer appended text. Other motifs within the scene include several sun disks, a winged scarab in front of the knees of the goddess, a vulture atop the heraldic plant of Upper Egypt behind her legs, and nest of migratory birds next to her arms. Interestingly, in the tomb of Seti I, she is oriented correctly for the swallowing and birth of the sun, but not in the tomb of Ramesses IV. Nut is shown as a woman supported by the God Shu who holds her body aloft. There are brief captions that seem to be overwhelmed by the huge image of the sky. The book itself is pictorial in nature, and resembles to some degree the Book of the Heavenly Cow. The commentary from the Roman period was published by H. These, and some investigation that followed, were all from the version found in the tomb ( KV2) of Ramesses IV, for the Osireion in Abydos had not been discovered at that point. It was Jean-Francois Champollion and Hippolito Rosellini who published the earliest drawing of the representation of the sky goddess. The longer appended text that accompanies the captions was reproduced in the Papyrus Carlsberg in Demotic script. The only other evidence of this book is a commentary written in the Roman Period, and an incomplete version in the tomb of Mutirdis (TT410) dating from the 26th Dynasty.
We find examples in the c enotaph of Seti I at Abydos and in the tomb of Ramesses IV, though the latter is abbreviated. We have actually very few example of the Book of Nut. The Book of Nut also known as The Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars These books are generally considered to consist of the Book of Nut, the Book of the Day and the Book of the Night. Generally speaking, the books emphasize cosmography and the topography of the sky, a topic which had its beginnings in the Book of the Heavenly Cow, though the astronomical ceilings found in the tombs of Seti I ( KV17) through Ramesses III ( KV11) can also be viewed as precursors to the Books of the Sky (heavens). The the focus is on the sun god, other heavenly bodies are also included. They depicted a double representation of Nut, back to back. During the day the sun god passes visibly along her body, but during the night, he travels through her body back to the place where he will rise once more.īeginning with Ramesses IV, two of the Books of the Sky were usually placed next to each other on the ceilings of royal tombs. These books centered around Nut, who swallows the sun god in the evening, only to give birth to him in the morning. After the death of Akhenaten, signaling the end of the Amarna Period, we find a new set of Books related to the afterlife.
0 kommentar(er)
