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Solar barques were the vessels used by the
One of the most well known examples of this is the
Solar barques were the vessels used by the sun god
A solar deity or sun deity is a deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it. Such deities are usually associated with power and strength. Solar deities and Sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms. The ...
Ra in ancient Egyptian mythology
Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptia ...
. During the day, Ra was said to use a vessel called the Mandjet ( egy, mꜥnḏt) or the Boat of Millions of Years ( egy, wjꜣ-n-ḥḥw), and the vessel he used during the night was known as the Mesektet ( egy, msktt).
Ra was said to travel through the sky on the barge, providing light to the world. Each twelfth of his journey formed one of the twelve Egyptian hours of the day, each overseen by a protective deity. Ra then rode the barque through the underworld
The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
...
, with each hour of the night considered a gate overseen by twelve more protective deities. Passing through all of these while fending off various destructive monsters, Ra reappeared each day on the eastern horizon. He was said to travel across the sky in the Mandjet Barque through the hours of the day, and then switch to the Mesektet Barque to descend into the underworld for the hours of the night.
The progress of Ra upon the Mandjet was sometimes conceived as his daily growth, decline, death, and resurrection and it appears in the symbology of Egyptian mortuary texts.
Funerary practices and religion
In folklore, a boat of this kind is used by the sun god. Thus, as thepharaoh
Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...
was a representation of the sun god on earth, the king would use a similar boat upon his death to travel through the underworld on their journey to the afterlife.
One of the most well known examples of this is the Khufu ship
The Khufu ship is an intact full-size solar barque from ancient Egypt. It was sealed into a pit at the foot of the Great Pyramid of pharaoh Khufu around 2500 BC, during the Fourth Dynasty of the ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom. Like other buried A ...
, which was built and then buried at Giza
Giza (; sometimes spelled ''Gizah'' arz, الجيزة ' ) is the second-largest city in Egypt after Cairo and fourth-largest city in Africa after Kinshasa, Lagos and Cairo. It is the capital of Giza Governorate with a total population of 9.2 ...
along with Khufu
Khufu or Cheops was an ancient Egyptian monarch who was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, in the first half of the Old Kingdom period ( 26th century BC). Khufu succeeded his father Sneferu as king. He is generally accepted as having co ...
and the rest of the items he would take with him to the afterlife. The ship was originally displayed in the specially-built Giza Solar boat museum
The Giza Solar boat museum was dedicated to display the reconstructed Khufu ship, a solar barque of pharaoh Khufu. It was constructed between 1961 and 1982, just a few meters from where the Khufu ship was found, on the southern side of the Gre ...
, but was subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum
The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM; ''al-Matḥaf al-Maṣriyy al-Kabīr''), also known as the Giza Museum, is an archaeological museum under construction in Giza, Egypt. It will house artifacts of ancient Egypt, including the complete Tutankhamu ...
.
See also
*Ancient Egyptian royal ships
Several ancient Egyptian solar ships and boat pits were found in many ancient Egyptian sites. The most famous is the Khufu ship now preserved in the Grand Egyptian Museum. The full-sized ships or boats were buried near ancient Egyptian pyramids o ...
* Abydos boats
The Abydos boats are the remnants of a group of ancient royal Egyptian ceremonial boats found at an archaeological site in Abydos, Egypt. Discovered in 1991, excavation of the Abydos boats began in 2000 at which time fourteen boats were identifie ...
* Solar deity
A solar deity or sun deity is a deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it. Such deities are usually associated with power and strength. Solar deities and Sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms. The ...
* Trundholm sun chariot
The Trundholm sun chariot ( da, Solvognen), is a Nordic Bronze Age artifact discovered in Denmark. It is a representation of the sun chariot, a bronze statue of a horse and a large bronze disk, which are placed on a device with spoked wheels.
...
References
Ra Barques Egyptian mythology Egyptology Mythological ships {{Egyptian-myth-stub