The ancient Egyptians believed that no sky,
Earth, gods, men, animals or plants existed before creation.
There was only an immense void they called Nun
that contained Atum -- the beginning of all things.
In the nineteenth century, a curious papyrus was found
in the excavations of ancient Thebes,
in which Ra himself describes his own creation.
"It was I that came into existence, like Jepri.
When I came into existence, 'Being' came into existence.
And all beings came into existence,
after I came into existence..."
The Bremner-Rhind papyrus
and the primitive texts of the pyramids
were the first representations of the Egyptians
on the world's creation and the origins of the gods.
"Atum became aware of himself,
and Ra, the sun, appeared.
Then he named Shu and the wind started to blow.
Afterwards, he called out Tefnut and it started to rain.
Shu and Tefnut had two children:
Geb, the Earth, and Nut, the sky.
Since Geb and Nut got married,
Nut is always over Geb
the sky over the Earth.
The stars were born from their union.
Geb and Nut begot Osiris, Isis, Seth and Neftis,
and they spawned the multitudes that inhabit this land."
"When Ra, or the Demiurge, created the world,
he established order and justice,
and casts the forces of chaos to a distant,
separate plain of that ordered world
that just world that Ra created
and where obviously gods and men also appeared.
Nonetheless, those forces of chaos that stayed
just outside of the perfect world created never ceased
to threaten Ra and the order established upon creation."
In their eagerness to understand the world around them,
the Egyptians started to build a complex magical universe.
From the texts of the pyramids,
written around 2.350 BC,
the scribes and priests started to update the texts
in accordance with the evolution of the religious ideas,
until the Book of the Dead came about in 1.300 BC.
Two-hundred years earlier, however,
they thought they had solved the enigma of Ra.
They deducted that two different worlds co-existed:
the one we see, and the one where Ra wandered through the night
and the deceased inhabited
a mysterious place they called the underworld.
"Besides the real world --the plain where their activities took place--
the ancient Egyptians believed that there was another world.
A world where a series of deities and other beings
lived alongside the deceased, in different levels of existence."
"The underworld was primarily a place of darkness.
Darkness is precisely one of the main characteristics
of that place, that space.
A place where the rays of the sun
only shine when the god Ra enters it,
bringing light to the souls, beings and gods that live there."
"On some occasions, the underworld is a fertile place
that reminds us of the shores of the Nile.
In others, is a barren, rocky place inhabited by evil beings
that jeopardize the order of creation."
"Along with the drawings, the hieroglyphs
allow us to understand the meaning of the images.
Through this written language and the drawings,
emerges a world that describes to us the reality
from not only 5.000 or 2.000 years ago, but also beyond that."
"Through those words and images,
ancient Egypt reaches a reality that is definitely more stable
than the actual reality of its everyday life,
for that reality as remained consistent until today.
Based on the words and the images,
we have the chance to submerge in that spiritual world
and find out even the tiniest details."
The first depictions of the enigmatic underworld
are present in the tomb of Thutmose I
a pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, around 1.500 BC.
It's the Book of Amduat
the Book of That Which is in the Underworld,
or the Book of the Hidden Room.
The way they imagined the underworld
boggles the imagination.
The Book of Amduat shows the Geography of the afterlife,
individually detailing each of the twelve hours of Ra's nocturnal journey.
The texts and drawings completed each other
with several funerary formulas.
Those formulas' main purpose
was to help the pharaoh to transform himself in his journey
alongside the sun, and attain, with Ra, his daily resurrection.
"Even the lengths of the regions that the sun god passes through
are indicated. Very exaggerated lengths.
For instance, from the western door through which Ra enters the underworld
and the region of Huermes the mentioned distance is 120 Iterus
an Egyptian distance measurement unit that would correspond to 1.200 Km."
"Ra entered the underworld through the western door of the horizon."
"In that first hour, that entire region vibrates with joy.
After twelve hours, Ra's light shines over the land
and all rejoice with his arrival.
Ra will also distribute fields among the inhabitant deities and beings,
organize their lives, manage their possessions and act pretty much
like a sovereign that manages and rules the territory."
Ra travels in a barge, during the twelve hours of the night.
He's actually represented in his Ba
his goat-headed spirit
which is standing under a dossal.
Alongside him in his barge, a crew of eight gods.
During the first hours in the barge,
Ra navigates through a river that crosses the underworld.
But from the fourth hour on, the river disappears
and Ra's barge is towed by ropes powered by the magic of the gods.
On the seventh hour, the goddess Isis and the "Oldest Wizard"
will repel Ra's eternal enemy: the serpent Apep.
"At the end of the journey and with Ra's regeneration completed,
the sun god --no longer as Ba, but as the beetle Khepri--
is welcomed by Shu,
the god that separates the sky from the Earth,
and finally leaves the underworld
to enter the world of the living by the eastern door."
It's difficult to know what Egyptians understood by "god".
Up until recently, we've tried to explain Egyptian mythology
using our own religious concepts and way of thinking,
and that was a mistake.
The main error was not to differentiate between the written language
hieroglyphs and drawings
and the oral language, which was the most important one.
Regrettably, we don't have any sound records available.
During more than 3.000 years,
the Egyptians developed and perfected their cosmology.
But their biggest obsession was to implore the gods
to ensure eternity by overcoming the earthly death.