This is an edition of the New Kingdom funerary text commonly called the Amduat, following the version from the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV35). This is the most complete version that survives today, albeit unfortunately riddled with errors in transmission; emendations based on the other versions, necessary to make the text comprehensible, are given in ⟨angle brackets⟩ to mark additions and {curly brackets} to mark deletions.
The hieroglyphic text follows photographs of the original tomb walls (reproduced in Bucher 1932), with reference to the transcription in Hornung 1963 where helpful. Retrograde writing has been normalized. Some corrections (marked with the appropriate brackets) have been made with reference to other versions of the Amduat. Transliteration and translation are my own, but with occasional consultation of Hornung 1963, Warburton 2007, and Darnell 2018 where interpretation was difficult or ambiguous. Since this translation is made for use in Wiktionary quotations, it errs more on the side of being literal than literary.
The line breaks here are made for convenience, but comments of numbers in the wiki markup of the hieroglyphic text indicate the original line numbering.
My goddesses who came into being through my active power, and my gods, when you came into being, it is for Khepri that you came into being, O you who are foremost of the afterworld!
Brighten the darkness that you might make the Place of Destruction breathe, that you might ascend in your name of Ra to the place where Osiris, Foremost of the Westerners, is.
May there be cries of joy for Ra at the opening of the double doors of the earth, and acclaim for you who make the akhs breathe when you enter the door of the Great (i.e. the underworld).
Bucher, Paul [editor] (1932) Les textes des tombes de Thoutmosis III et d’Aménophis II, plates 27–41.
Hornung, Erik [editor] (1963) Das Amduat: Die Schrift des verborgenen Raumes. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Warburton, David [translator]; Hornung, Erik and Abt, Theodor [editors] (2007) The Egyptian Amduat: The Book of the Hidden Chamber. Zürich: Living Human Heritage Publications.
Darnell, John Coleman and Darnell, Colleen Manassa [translators] (2018) The Ancient Egyptian Netherworld Books. Atlanta: SBL Press.
^ The final word is sometimes proposed to read jrw(w)(“forms”), but the rest of the text does not employ
with
unless the verb has a reduplicated final consonant, and the spelling with
here is consistent across surviving versions of the Amduat; furthermore, jrww(“forms”) is itself attested throughout the text and regularly spelled with plural markings and determinatives and without
. All of this argues against such an interpretation.
^ Restoration based on the Amduat of Ramesses VI, but far from certain; it may be that no surviving version preserves the original, non-corrupt text.
^ The meaning of this line is unclear, and at least the end of it (if not more) is probably corrupt.
^ The end of this line is corrupt, and most surviving versions of the text follow it with a blank space. The reconstruction here follows Hornung (1963) Das Amduat: Die Schrift des verborgenen Raumes, volume 2, page 38.
![}]](/w/extensions/wikihiero/img/hiero_Ba17a.png?09a25 "}]"){kind=small}
