The Duat — the Underworld
A nighttime country of gates and guardians that both the sun and the dead must cross.
Also: Duat · Dat · Tuat · underworld · netherworld · land of the dead
The Duat was the Egyptian underworld: a vast, complex region beneath or beyond the visible world through which the sun travelled each night and into which the dead descended. It held gates, guardians, dangers, and lakes of fire for the damned, but also the kingdom of Osiris and the path to the blessed afterlife. Funerary texts served partly as guidebooks to its geography.
In short
The Egyptian underworld or netherworld — the Duat — the region through which the sun and the dead pass at night, containing both perils and the abode of the blessed, ruled by Osiris.
Where it’s found
Pyramid Texts; Coffin Texts; New Kingdom Netherworld Books
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
Conceptions of the Duat develop from the Pyramid Texts (more sky-and-stars oriented) toward the detailed New Kingdom underworld geography of the Netherworld Books; the word and idea persist throughout.
The Duat also features in the myths-legends category as the setting of the sun's night journey; this entry is the place itself.