The Journey Through the Duat
Twelve hours of night, twelve gates, and one serpent standing between the sun and the dawn.
Also: Duat · Dat · underworld journey · Amduat · Book of Gates · Book of Caverns · Netherworld Books · twelve hours of night
Egyptians imagined the underworld, the Duat, as a vast region the sun god traversed each night in twelve hours, and into which the dead also entered. New Kingdom 'Netherworld Books' — the Amduat, the Book of Gates, and others — chart this nightly journey in detail: its gates and guardians, its blessed and damned, and the climactic battle against the serpent Apophis before sunrise. These were inscribed first in royal tombs to secure the king's rebirth with the sun.
In short
The mythic narrative of the sun god's nightly passage through the underworld (Duat), mapped hour by hour in the New Kingdom Netherworld Books, in which he confronts dangers, defeats the chaos-serpent Apophis, and regenerates.
Where it’s found
The Amduat and Book of Gates (New Kingdom royal tombs)
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
A New Kingdom development: the Amduat (earliest, e.g. tomb of Thutmose III), the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, and the Books of the Sky, first in royal tombs (Dyn. 18–20) and later democratized onto private papyri and coffins.
The Duat as a place also appears under the death-afterlife category; this entry is the mythic/narrative solar journey.