The Book of Gates is an ancient Egyptian funerary text dating from the New Kingdom. The Book of Gates is long and detailed, consisting of one hundred scenes. It narrates the passage of a newly deceased soul into the next world journeying with the sun god, Ra, through the underworld during the hours of the night towards his resurrection. The soul is required to pass through a series of 'gates' at each hour of the journey. Each gate is guarded by a different serpent deity that is associated with a different goddess. It is important that the deceased knows the names of each guardian. Depictions of the judgment of the dead are shown in the last three hours. The text implies that some people will pass through unharmed, but others will suffer torment in a lake of fire. At the end of Ra's journey through the underworld, he emerges anew to take his place back in the sky.
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👉 Book of Gates in the context of KV57
Tomb KV57 is the royal tomb of Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty and is located in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.
The tomb was located by Edward Ayrton in February 1908 for Theodore Davis. Due to its location in the valley floor, the tomb was filled with debris that had washed down during occasional flash-flooding. The tomb is markedly different from previous Eighteenth Dynasty royal tombs as it has a straightened axis, and has painted reliefs instead of murals; the Book of Gates also appears for the first time. The king's red granite sarcophagus was found with its lid broken, though otherwise intact. The tomb contained the remains of several burials, none of them conclusively belonging to Horemheb.
Book of Gates in the context of Duat
The Duat or Tuat (Ancient Egyptian: Hieroglyph: 𓇽 romanized: dwꜣt) is a concept in ancient Egyptian mythology involving death. It is most often seen as a realm where people go after they die. Due to linguistic shifts within Ancient Egypt, the Duat has also been called Te (Coptic: Ⲧⲏ, romanized: Tē) and Amenthes (Ancient Greek: Ἀμένθης, romanized: Aménthēs).
What is known of the Duat derives principally from funerary texts such as the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Coffin Texts, the Amduat, and the Book of the Dead, among many other sources. It is generally known best as a dark subterranean realm that not only houses the deceased, but a variety of deities. Common deities depicted in these texts are Osiris, Anubis, Thoth, Horus, and Maat in various forms. While all of these documents involve the Duat, each of them fulfilled a different purpose and depict the Duat in a variety of unique ways.