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 cenotaph 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. 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. Ra then rearranged heaven and the underworld and left earth on the back of the celestial cow.Īfter the death of Akhenaten, signaling the end of the Amarna Period, we find a new set of Books related to the afterlife. However, Ra ended up feeling sorry for them and so deceived Hathor into letting some humans live. Ra sent Hathor as his eye (cobra snake) to punish the rebels, who began to destroy them with fire. This was depicted as paradise, but humans rebelled against the aging sun god, Ra. In the beginning daylight was always present, and humans and gods cohabited on earth. The Book of the Divine Cow begins with the "Myth of the Destruction of Mankind", the Egyptian version of the story of the great flood. Passages from these books are mostly found in Ramessid period tombs. She swallows the sun at the close of the day and gives birth to it each morning.
For example, the Book of the Night, like other books, documents the sun's journey but set within Nut, goddess of the heavens. Closely related is The Book of the Celestial Cow. There are actually a number of individual books, but the better documented of these include the Book of the Day, the Book of the Night and the Book of Nut. This book, developed during the late New Kingdom, describes the sun's passage through the heavens.