The Awakening of Osiris and the Transit of the Solar Barques: Royal Apotheosis in a Most Concise Book of the Underworld and Sky

Among the many scenes and texts that occur for the first time in the

Nineteenth Dynasty cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos is a representation of

the awakening of Osiris by Horus, which appears directly beneath a

vignette depicting the transit of the solar barques. The annotations to

this bi-partite tableau appear in a mixture of standard, hieroglyphic

Egyptian and cryptographic scripts. Similar groups of scenes and texts

occur in the Twentieth Dynasty royal tombs of Ramesses VI (KV9) and

Ramesses IX (KV6), the Twenty-Second Dynasty tomb of Sheshonq III at

Tanis (NRT5), and the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty private tomb of Mutirdis at

Thebes (TT410). In addition, significant, albeit partial parallels occur

on the re-carved, Twenty-Second Dynasty sarcophagus of Psusennes and a

Ptolemaic sarcophagus inscribed for a certain Khaf. This study offers a

summary of the scenes’ iconography together with the first synoptic

edition of the relevant annotations, taking into account all currently

published exemplars. Many of the cryptographic texts are translated here

for the first time, while others receive updated translations and

expanded analyses. Joshua Aaron Roberson also considers the meaning and

context of the paired scenes in royal and private monuments, in order to

demonstrate the status of the bi-partite tableau as a unified

composition. This composition is identified as a concise representative

of the cosmological genre referred to usually as the Books of the

Underworld and Sky.