The Sun's Journey

Summary

The sun's journey is the story of the road the sun travels every day: where it comes out in the morning, what carries it, who drives it, where it goes in at evening, and where it is during the night until it returns. Its oldest complete telling is in the Egyptian books that draw Ra's night journey; the oldest copy of the first of them, the Amduat, is in the tomb of Thutmose I at the start of the New Kingdom, and older still is the picture of the sun cutting through mountains on an Akkadian seal of about 2300 BCE.

Ra crosses the sky by day in one boat and enters the night in another. Egyptian texts call the day boat mꜥnḏ.t and the night boat msk.tt, and a medical papyrus in London addresses those "who escort Re on his ascent to the horizon, who row in the evening bark and travel in the morning bark". When the sun sets, Ra enters the Duat with a ram's head, and his boat sails on a river running through the underworld as the Nile runs through Egypt. The night has twelve hours. In some the boat is hauled over the sand of the land of Sokar; in the sixth Ra unites with the body of Osiris; in the seventh Apophis tries to strand the boat on a sandbank and is overcome; in the twelfth Ra comes out as the scarab Khepri and Shu lifts him above the horizon. The Book of Gates divides the same night by gates guarded by serpents, through which the boat passes only with the password, and at its end Nun lifts the boat out of the water. Other coffins paint Nut swallowing the sun in the evening; the sun crosses her body in the night, and she gives birth to it at dawn. That is why Ra says of himself: I am Khepri in the morning, Ra at noon and Atum in the evening.

The story recurs in many mythologies, with a different vehicle, driver, enemy and gate. In Mesopotamia Utu cuts through the mountains in the morning and in the evening returns to his house beneath the earth, where the gatekeeper greets him and opens the door; in the epic Gilgamesh takes "the road of the sun" inside Mount Māšu for twelve double-hours of darkness. At Ugarit Shapsh, "lamp of the gods", goes down to the dead and rules them. In Iran the sun comes out each day through an aperture in Mount Alburz and goes in through another. In India seven mares draw the chariot of Sūrya, and Svarbhānu pierces him with darkness. In Greece Helios drives his chariot down to Ocean and gives Heracles a golden cup in which to cross the sea. In China Xihe bathes the ten suns and drives the sun, Yi shoots down nine of them when they come out together, and Kuafu runs after the sun until he catches it as it goes in. In Japan Amaterasu hides in a rock cave and the world goes dark. In the North Sól drives two horses and a wolf chases her until he swallows her at the end of time. Among the Amazigh the Atarantes curse the sun when it stands high above them.

The idea these stories turn on is that the sun has a half that is seen and a half that is not. By day it passes over people; by night it is where no one can see it, in the underworld, inside the mountain or in the sea, and then it comes back. So every people asks the same questions and answers them with what its own land holds. What does it travel on? A boat among the Egyptians, whose road is the Nile; a chariot and horses among the Indians, Greeks and Norse; crows in China. Who drives it? Ra himself, or Sól, or Xihe. Who blocks it? A serpent, a wolf, or a demon who pierces it with darkness. Where does it go in? Into a mountain with a door and a guard, into an abyss, into the sea, or into the wood. And time is counted from this road: twelve hours of night in Egypt, twelve double-hours inside Mount Māšu, sixteen stations of the day in China, apertures in Mount Alburz through which the sun enters one each day, and in the North sun and moon running "for men to reckon years". What happens to the sun happens to the dead: the dead travel with Ra in his boat, Shapsh rules their spirits, and in Mesopotamia the spirits enter by the same door through which Shamash goes in.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The story has no single name in the ancient languages, but its key words recur. Akkadian calls the sun's coming out aṣê šamši and its going in erēb šamši; in the epic the scorpion-men guard the sun "at its going out and at its coming in", and Gilgamesh takes ḫarrān šamši, the road of the sun. Erēbu in the Akkadian dictionary is "to enter", and is said of the sun when it sets; it is Arabic gharaba: r is r, b is b, and the throat letter at the start of the word, which Akkadian does not write, is replaced by e. In Lane gharabat al-shams is "the sun set"; gharaba is "he went away, departed"; of a wild animal it means "he retired from view, hid himself in his lurking-place"; and al-maghribān are the two farthest points where the sun sets in summer and in winter, with a hundred and eighty points between them. Akkadian sees the sun entering its house; Arabic sees it withdrawing out of sight like a wild animal. Arabic also joins the boat and the road in one root: al-fulk is the ship, a word applied to Noah's ark, and al-falak in Lane is "the place of the revolving of the stars"; and the Qur'an says of the sun and the moon, "each floats in an orbit (falak)". Sabaḥa is to swim on the surface of the water, and sabḥ is also the running of a horse that stretches its forelegs like a swimmer's arms. So the verse holds in two words the boat of Ra and the horses of Sūrya, Helios and Sól.

Linguistic Root

Entering and setting

The Akkadian dictionary of the electronic Babylonian Library gives erēbu as "to enter": to enter a house, a land, a city, heaven, the underworld; and "of the sun, to set". In the ninth tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh Mount Māšu "daily guards the rising of the sun", and the scorpion-men "guard the sun at its going out and its coming in". BDB gives Hebrew ʿereb as evening and sunset, and Wikander notes that Ugaritic texts describe sunset, when they do so in neutral terms, with the verb ʿrb.

The project's table of sound changes says that Semitic ġ disappears in Akkadian, merges with ʿ in Hebrew and stays gh in Arabic, and that ʿ disappears in Akkadian or becomes e. By that table Akkadian erēbu and Hebrew ʿereb agree with Arabic gharaba. The weak point is that Ugaritic, which writes ʿ and ġ apart, writes the verb with ʿ, while Arabic has gh; the two letters stand in one group of throat letters in the Juthoor laws. In Lane gharabat al-shams is "the sun set"; gharaba is "he went away, retired from men", and is said of a wild animal hiding in its lurking-place; maghrib is the place and time of sunset; and al-maghribān are the two farthest points where the sun sets in summer and in winter, with a hundred and eighty points between them; the Qur'an speaks of the "Lord of the two easts and the Lord of the two wests".

The boat and the orbit

In Lane al-fulk is a ship, applied to Noah's ark; al-falak is "the place of the revolving of the stars", which the astronomers make seven surrounding spheres; falak al-samāʾ is the pole of heaven, "likened to the pivot of the mill-stone"; al-falak is also the revolving of the heaven; and the falka of a spindle is the round whorl by which it turns. Sabaḥa is to swim on the surface of the water; one says "the stars swim in the falak"; the Qur'an says of the sun and the moon, "each floats in an orbit"; and sabḥ is the running of a horse that stretches its forelegs, horses being called sawābiḥ. So Arabic joins what the mythologies keep apart: the Egyptians put the sun in a boat because their road was the Nile, the Indians, Greeks and Norse put it in a chariot drawn by horses, and the Qur'an describes its course with a word said of the ship and of the horse alike. In the North the father of the sun and moon is Mundilfari, a name Cleasby and Vigfusson take to refer to the turning of the heavens, as Arabic likens the pole of heaven to the pivot of a mill-stone.

Setting as rest

The Egyptian dictionary gives the verb ḥtp as to be pleased, content, to rest, and "to set (of the sun)", with examples from the papyri: "when Re sets in life", and "do you not set in the western mountain?"; the western mountain, mꜣnw, is also the realm of the dead. On the method we read it as Arabic ḥatf: ḥ for ḥ, t for t, and Egyptian p answered by Arabic f, as old Semitic p becomes f in Arabic in the table of sound changes. Ḥatf in Lane is death, and māta ḥatfa anfihi is "he died upon his bed; a natural death; respiring until he yielded his last breath", not by slaughter, drowning or burning. So the Egyptian sun, when it sets, dies a quiet death in its bed and is born again in the morning. This is a reading proposed on the method.

Attestations by Culture

Egypt: the two boats and the hours

The Amduat itself gives the reason it was carved in tombs: whoever knows these secret images becomes a shining spirit able to enter the Duat and leave it, so the dead man rides with Ra. Before the council of the gods in Papyrus Chester Beatty I, Seth says that he kills Ra's enemy every day, standing at the prow of the Bark of Millions, and the Book of Overthrowing Apep was recited daily in the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. Ra does not make the journey alone: helpers row with him, Seth guards him, and priests aid him with words every day.

Mesopotamia: the two mountains and the door

The second hymn to Utu says that Ningal bears him, then he comes out of his palace and rises over the mountains. The seal of the scribe Adda, of about 2300–2200 BCE, shows him cutting through the mountains on the horizon to rise in the morning, rays streaming from his shoulders. ORACC says that at sunrise Shamash was known to emerge from his underground sleeping chamber and take his daily path across the skies, and that a second-millennium prayer recited at sunset describes his return home: his gatekeeper salutes him and opens the door to his chambers, then he settles down to a dinner cooked by his wife Aya. It adds that the spirits of the dead entered the netherworld through a passage on the horizon in the far west, which in some traditions was the same entrance that led to Shamash's dwelling.

In the ninth tablet of the epic Gilgamesh reaches Mount Māšu, the twin mountains that daily guard the rising of the sun; their tops reach the fabric of heaven and their bases go down to the underworld, and at their gate scorpion-men guard the sun at its going out and coming in. The scorpion-man tells him that inside the mountain are twelve double-hours where the darkness is dense and there is no light. Gilgamesh takes the road of the sun and counts the double-hours one by one, unable to see what is behind him, until at the twelfth he comes out ahead of the sun into a garden whose trees are precious stones. In the tenth tablet Siduri tells him that no one has crossed the ocean since the days of old, and that the one who crosses it is the hero Shamash.

Ugarit: the lamp of the gods among the dead

The Baal Cycle calls Shapsh "lamp of the gods", and Baal's messengers take her road to Mot; some commentators read the lines as telling the messengers to travel with the sun, who goes down to the house of the dead every night. When Mot swallows Baal, Shapsh carries his body with Anat to Mount Saphon. At the end of the sixth tablet is a hymn to her: "Shapsh, you rule the Rephaim; Shapsh, you rule the divine ones; the gods are your company, see, the dead are your company." In the royal funerary rite KTU 1.161 Shapsh is told to do something that some scholars read as "go down" to the dead and Wikander as "be hot". In the story of Kirta the warriors say the king will "reach the sunset", that is, die.

Iran: the apertures of Mount Alburz

The Mihr Yasht says that Mithra, first of the heavenly gods, reaches over Mount Hara before "the undying, swift-horsed sun". The Bundahishn says that the sun turns round Mount Alburz and Mount Terak, the middle of the world, like a moat round a city, and that Alburz has a hundred and eighty apertures in the east and a hundred and eighty in the west: every day the sun comes in through one aperture and goes out through another, until after three hundred and sixty days and the five extra days it returns to the same aperture.

India: the one wheel and the seven mares

The Rigveda says: seven bay mares harnessed to your car carry you, Sūrya, god with radiant hair; Sūrya has yoked the seven bright daughters of the car. Another hymn says: seven yoke the one-wheeled chariot, and one horse with seven names draws it; the twelve-spoked wheel of order rolls round heaven and never wears out. In a third hymn Svarbhānu, of the brood of the Asuras, pierces the sun with darkness, so that all creatures look like one who does not know where he stands, until the seer Atri finds the hidden sun and sets its eye back in heaven.

Greece: the chariot and the cup

The Homeric hymn to Helios says that as he rides in his chariot he shines on men and gods, and stallions carry him; when he has stayed his golden-yoked chariot he rests on the highest point of heaven, until he drives his horses down through heaven to Ocean. In Ovid Helios describes the road to his son Phaethon: its start is steep, so that the horses, fresh in the morning, can hardly climb it; its middle is the height of heaven, from which sea and earth are seen and his breast trembles; its end is a sheer descent that needs a sure hand, and Tethys, who receives him in her waters, fears that he will fall. Then Phaethon takes the chariot and the earth burns. The Sun gives Heracles a golden cup in which to cross Ocean to the cattle of Geryon. And in the Odyssey Helios threatens, if he is not given justice, to go down to Hades and shine among the dead.

China: the ten suns

In the Shanhaijing Xihe bathes the ten suns in the Sweet Abyss, and the suns rest on the Fusang tree above the hot-water valley, nine on the lower branches and one at the top; as one arrives another goes out, carried by crows. The book names seven mountains in the east "where sun and moon come out" and seven in the west "where sun and moon go in". The Huainanzi makes the sun's day sixteen stations, from the Bright Valley to the Meng Valley, and near their end "it halts its woman and rests its horses". In the Book of Documents Xi Zhong receives the rising sun in the east and He Zhong sees it off in the west.

In the time of the emperor Yao the turn-taking broke, the ten suns came out together and burned the crops, and Yi shot down nine of them, so that the crows inside them died and their feathers fell; see Hou Yi. Kuafu ran after the sun until he caught it in the valley where it sets, grew thirsty, drank the two rivers and died on the way to water; see Kuafu. At the far west of Kunlun stands the Ruo tree, whose flowers light the earth.

Japan: the cave

Amaterasu, angered by what her brother Susanoo did to her fields and her weaving hall, goes into the heavenly rock cave and shuts its door, and heaven and earth go dark. The kami gather, hang a mirror and jewels on a tree, and Ame-no-Uzume dances until the whole gathering laughs; Amaterasu opens the door a little, someone pulls her out, and a rope is stretched behind her so that she cannot go back.

The North: the two wolves

Sól drives the two horses that draw the sun's chariot, with bellows under their shoulders to cool them and a shield before her without which mountains and sea would burn; the wolf Sköll chases her from behind, and the wolf Hati runs ahead wanting the moon. At the end of time the wolf catches the sun and swallows her, but first she bears a daughter who rides her roads in the new world.

The Amazigh: the hurried sun

Herodotus says that the Atarantes of inner Libya curse the sun when it is high and revile it, because its burning heat afflicts them and their land. In the tales of the Tuareg of Aïr the sun is a hurried woman who walks before dawn and the moon an older, calmer woman; when the moon disappears at the end of the month the Kel Ahaggar say that the sun has caught her, stopped her and gone on alone.

The Qur'an

The Qur'an says: "And the sun runs to a resting-place of its own; that is the decree of the Mighty, the Knowing. And the moon We have measured out in stations, until it returns like an old date-stalk. It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day; each floats in an orbit." And Dhu'l-Qarnayn reaches the setting-place of the sun and finds it setting in a murky spring. So in the Qur'an the sun has a resting-place to which it runs, a setting-place that can be reached, and the moon has stations by which time is counted.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The versions agree that the sun goes in at evening through a door and comes out in the morning through a door, and they differ over what lies behind the door. For the Egyptians it is a river in the underworld whose hours are crossed by boat; for Mesopotamia the inside of a mountain with a gatekeeper, a house and a dinner; for the Persians apertures in a mountain round the world; for the Chinese an abyss and a mountain into which the sun goes and a hot valley where it bathes; for the Norse the wood and the sea. The mountain at the end of the road is a form of the sacred mountain: Māšu, Alburz, and Kunlun, west of which stands the Ruo tree. The tree on which the suns rest in the east, the Fusang, is a form of the world tree.

Most agree that on the road an enemy tries to stop the sun: Apophis in Egypt, Svarbhānu in India, the two wolves in the North. In Egypt the enemy is overcome every night, in India the sun is recovered by prayer, but in the North the wolf catches it at the end of time, in Ragnarök. Ra's fight with Apophis in the seventh hour is an image of the chaoskampf. In China the danger comes from the sun itself: the ten suns come out together and burn the earth, Yi shoots them, and Kuafu goes after the sun and dies of thirst, as Phaethon burns the earth when he drives Helios's chariot and the Atarantes curse the sun when it stands high.

The sun's descent each evening is the most often repeated of the stories of descent to the underworld: Ra goes down into the Duat, Shapsh goes down to the Rephaim, Shamash goes in by the door through which the spirits of the dead go in, and Gilgamesh takes the sun's road under the mountain. In the fifth hour of the Book of Gates Osiris sits as judge of the dead and the heart is weighed, and in Mesopotamia Shamash is the judge who sees everything, in the judgment of the dead. Global Egyptian Museum, Book of Gates.

All light disappears in two stories: Amaterasu goes into the cave and the world goes dark until the kami bring her out, and Helios threatens to go down to the dead and Zeus keeps him in the sky. The sun comes from an eye in three accounts: from Izanagi's left eye in Japan, from Puruṣa's eye in India, and from the left eye of Pangu in China, in the cosmic body pattern.

In every version the sun counts time. The Amazigh keep a solar calendar for ploughing and harvest and celebrate the summer solstice, in the agricultural calendar. And the Babylonians, the Babylonian essay says, divided the sun's path into twelve signs.

Symbolic Reading

The project's essays read the story in most mythologies as a description of what is seen in the sky. The Egyptian essay says that Ra's boat is the sun's path from east to west, his entry into the underworld the sun sinking below the horizon, Apophis the darkness that would swallow it, his victory every dawn the sunrise, and the twelve hours of the Duat the hours of the night, which for the essay makes them the first night clock in history. The Sumerian essay reads Utu going out by the eastern door, coming in by the western door and travelling beneath the earth as an understanding that the sun passes under the earth to come back. The Greek essay reads Helios's chariot as a description of the sun's daily motion. The Norse essay reads Sól chased by the wolf as the sun's motion and the polar night, and the two wolves as eclipses. The Babylonian essay says the Babylonians divided the sun's path into twelve signs, one for each month, the first solar-stellar calendar by which the times of sowing and harvest were known.

The Hindu essay describes Sūrya as crossing the sky every day in a chariot, and the Canaanite essay describes Shapsh as riding a chariot across the sky and going down to the underworld; the Ugaritic texts cited on this page give Shapsh no chariot, only a road and a descent to the dead.

The texts themselves hold both readings. The counting in the story is plain: twelve hours of night in Egypt, twelve double-hours in Māšu, sixteen stations in China, three hundred and sixty apertures in Alburz, the "year-counter" in the North. But in the texts the road is also the road of the dead, and whoever knows the names of Ra's hours comes out with him in the morning.