Egyptian PantheonHorizon
Western Horizon
The akhet of the west, where the sun god sets each evening to enter the Duat, and the direction of the dead, whom Egyptian texts call 'westerners' under the rule of Osiris.
About Western Horizon
Akhet of the setting sun
The western horizon (akhet) is where Ra enters the Duat each evening and where the dead are "westerners" under Osiris. Pyramid Texts and later underworld books orient tombs and spells toward that descent. It is a daily cosmological door, not a city. Abydos and the necropolis edges of Thebes are earthly analogues. There is no single gatehouse excavated as "the" horizon. The west is a direction of completion and danger.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Pyramid Texts (solar / western-horizon spells)
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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