The Egyptian conception of the underworld included many
gates, portals or pylons which must be passed by the sun god on
his nightly journey, by the deceased king as part of the sun
god's entourage (or fused with the god), and by the deceased
who must pass these barriers in order to reach the place of
afterlife existence. Different versions or accounts of the
netherworld gates were preserved in the various funerary texts
with over 1,000 deities depicted, but in all cases the barriers
were guarded by minor Egyptian gods who would allow only those
who knew their secret names - and thereby had power over them -
to pass. On the walls of the royal tombs of the Valley of the
Kings twelve pylons or gates were commonly incorporated into
the funerary texts - such as versions of the Book of Gates -
inscribed during the New Kingdom. Although each gate was
depicted as an architectural feature, it was named as a goddess
and protected by a fire-spitting serpent and by its own
guardian deity. The fifth gate, for example, is termed "she of
duration", its serpent is called "flame-eyed" and its resident
deity is "true of heart". In the funerary papyri composed for
nobles and others there is more variation. In Chapter 144 of
the Book of the Dead, for example, seven gates are mentioned,
each with its own god, a doorkeeper and a herald. Thus the
seventh gate is watched by the god "sharpest of them all", the
doorkeeper "strident of voice" and the herald "rejector of
rebels". In other texts there are 21 gates known as the "secret
portals of the mansion of Osiris in the field of reeds", each
of which is given a number of names or epithets and guarded by
a zoo-anthropomorphic deity usually seated and holding a large
knife. The names of the gates are mixed in nature, being
sometimes fearsome and sometimes innocuous as with Gate 14
"mistress of anger, dancing on blood" or Gate 3 "mistress of
the altar". The guardian deities are usually given terrifying
or repulsive names such as "swallower of sinners" or "existing
on maggots" in order to heighten their threatening effect -
although in some cases they are unnamed in the texts, adding to
the number of Egyptian deities known to have exited but
impossible to catalogue. The following shows the 12 gates as
depicted in the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings:
Gate - Representative Deities - Features
of the area _ 1 - The gods in the
entrance, the 4 weary ones - 4 cardinal points
2 - Apophis, 2 enneads - Lake of fire
3 - Goddesses of the hours, Osiris, Horus -
Lake of life, lake of uraei 4 - Gods
of space and time, Osiris - Throne of Osiris
5 - Osiris, Apophis, 12 restraining gods -
Circular lake of fire 6 - Osiris, the
blessed and punished dead - Stakes of Geb
7 - Lords of provision in the West -
Fields of provisions 8 -
Fire-breathing serpent, sons of Horus, ba souls - Waters of
the drowned 9 - Deities with nets,
Apophis - Area leading to "emergence"
10 - Apophis, face of Ra, goddesses of the
hours - Area of restraint of Apophis
11 - Gods who carry the blazing light, baboons
of sunrise - Area directly before dawn
12 - Isis, Nephthys, Nun, Nut, the reborn sun
- The primeval waters from which the sun
emerges
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