the-typhonian:

The following are excerpts from “Ancient Egypt” with David
Silverman as the general editor.

The written copy below doesn’t contain the same formatting
or picture the original sources have.

Anything bolded is something I have modified. [REST CUT]
means the rest of the text has not been typed up, thus information is missing.

THE CELESTIAL REALM

SUB HEADER: THE EGYPTIAN COSMOS

[SIDE TEXT, accompanied by an image of Osiris]

According to Herodotus, the Egyptians were “religious to
excess, beyond any other nation in the world”. Egyptian religion was not a
belief system in the same sense way as Christianity or Islam, with a single
deity and one fundamental set of explanations for the origin and functioning of
the cosmos. Among the most striking aspects of Egyptian religion were its great
number of gods and goddesses – each of whom might have several “aspects” –  and its readiness to accept the validity of
different and even contradictory cosmological accounts. [TO READ MORE OF HERODOTUS’ WORKS, CLICK HERE.]

[MAIN TEXT]

Looking at the sky without telescopes, the Egyptians saw
only an undifferentiated background of blue by day, or black by night – the
same qualities visible in the River Nile. Understandably, therefore, the
Egyptians concluded that the sky, like the Nile, was composed of water. The
waters of the sky were thought to surround the earth and extend infinitely
outwards in all directions. The world existed as a single void inside the
endless sea, with only the atmosphere to keep the heavenly ocean from falling
onto the earth – much like a balloon kept inflated by the air inside it.

All life existed inside this cosmic bubble: the universal
waters themselves were devoid of life. By day, the sun sailed across the
surface of the sky-ocean, animating those who lived on the earth below; after sunset,
while the stars sailed through the sky, it descended into a region called “the
Duat”. Because of the Egyptians recognized that the sun was composed, in some
manner, of fire [TEXT CUT], they realized that it had to remain within the
cosmic void, but in a place not visible to those on earth. The Duat was
generally thought to lie under the earth, a counterpart to the sky and
atmosphere of the known world. In Egyptian cosmology, therefore, the world
consisted, as the ancient text themselves tell us, of “sky, earth and Duat”.

This picture of the cosmos is reflected also in images from
temples, tombs, papyri and sarcophagi. However, perhaps the clearest and most
comprehensive illustration is found on the ceilings of two Ramesside monuments:
the cenotaph of Sety I (ca. 1290 – 1279 BCE) at Abydos, and the tomb of
Ramesses IV (ca. 1156 – 1150 BCE) in the Valley of the Kings, Western Thebes.
The ceilings are remarkable not so much for their images (which occur
elsewhere) as for the text that accompany them: these are the subject of
analysis and commentary in two papyri of the second century CE – some fiftenen
hundred years after their Ramesside iriginals. The scene depicts the surface of
the sky (the goddess Nut, “watery one”) held above the earth (the god Geb,
“land”) by the atmosphere (the god Shu, “dry” or “empty”), while along Nut’s
body the sun is depicted at various points in its daily cycle. The text above
describes both the universe outside the cosmic void and the structure of the
cosmos itself: “The upper side of this sky exists in uniform darkness, the
limits of which … are unkown, these having been set in the waters, in
lifelessness. There is no light… no brightness there. And as for every
place that is neither sky nor earth, that is the Duat in its entirety.” Texts
elsewhere in the scene describe the Duat as lying within the body of Nut, the
Sky. This reflects the Egyptian concept of the sky “giving birth” to the sun
each morning. In Egyptian thought, these images were complementary, not contradictory.
Fundamentally, the concept of the world as a cosmic void within a universal
ocean remained consistent and essentially unchanged throughout the three
millennia of recorded ancient Egyptian history.

The Egyptian image of the cosmos was universally depicted by
using the “mythological” counterparts of its elements – Nut stretched above the
recumbent body of Geb, with Shu in between (see illustration, p.126). However,
the concept of the world also appears as a standard element bordering most
reliefs and paintings. Traditionally the ceilings of Egyptian tombs and tombs
would be decorated with yellow stars on a blue ground; the floors were paved
with basalt, evoking the fertile black soil of Egypt; and columns supporting
the ceiling were carved and painted in imitation of lotus or papyrus stalks.