Book of the Night
Also known as: Book of Night, Night Book, Book of the Sky — Night
An illustrated funerary-cosmological text mapping the sun god’s twelve-hour journey through the night within the body of the sky-goddess Nut, culminating in his rebirth at dawn.
Description
The Book of the Night is a Ramesside ceiling text that narrates and images the nocturnal course of Ra through the Duat, conceived as passing within the body of the sky-goddess Nut. Divided into twelve hours, it catalogs deities, gates, caverns, lakes of fire, and protective beings who assist the solar barque against the forces of chaos, especially Apophis. Captions and registers pair terse statements with iconographic sequences: Nut swallowing the sun at dusk and delivering it at dawn; Mehen encircling and shielding the god; the unification of Ra with Osiris to renew vital power. Closely related to other royal afterlife compositions, it functions as a cosmographic-ritual guide to night, ensuring solar renewal and the ordered cycling of time.
Historiography
Attested on vaulted ceilings of New Kingdom royal tombs, the text belongs to the Ramesside corpus of ‘sky books’ and appears alongside its counterpart, the Book of the Day. Surviving witnesses show orthographic variants, altered orderings, and differing caption lengths, reflecting workshop transmission and iconographic adaptation to architectural fields. Later copies and excerpts attest ongoing reception into the Third Intermediate Period. Modern editions collate tomb copies and reconstruct hour-by-hour sequences, emphasizing its relationship to the Amduat and the Book of Gates.
Date Notes
Ramesside period composition; first securely attested in royal tombs of the 19th–20th Dynasties. Transmission continues with variations in later copies.
Themes
Major Characters
- Ra
- Nut
- Osiris
- Apep
- Mehen
Myths
- Twelve Hours of the Night
- Passage of the Solar Bark
- Union of Ra and Osiris
Facts
- Belongs to the Ramesside ‘sky books’ corpus alongside the Book of the Day.
- Organized into twelve hourly sections corresponding to the night watches.
- Depicts Ra traveling inside the goddess Nut, guaranteeing cyclical rebirth.
- Iconography pairs short captions with multi-register ceiling scenes.
- Apophis (Apep) is the principal adversary, restrained or dismembered nightly.
- The Mehen serpent encircles and protects the sun god at critical passages.
- Hour Six emphasizes the unification of Ra with Osiris to renew vitality.
- Often preserved on vaulted ceilings of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings.
- Related in structure and purpose to the Amduat and the Book of Gates.
- Functions ritually and cosmographically rather than as narrative literature.