Section One of Chapter 127 of the Book of the Dead and the Deities of the Cavern Investigated

The current work investigates section one of BD 127 and their deities i.e. the deities of the caverns. Thus, this article is divided into two parts. Part one will focus on the BD 127 including an analysis of the first section, presenting various rubrics used, surveying its vignettes showing possible iconography of the deities of the cavern, and examining the different versions of BD 127. This will be executed by comparing three versions of the same section, i.e., section one of BD 127, inscribed on the coffin of Pa-hor-nefer-pa-khem and the two sarcophagi i.e. Ankh-hapy and Pa-nehem-Isis so that the similarities and dissimilarities are presented regarding the duties of the deities in question and how the omission of some deities affects these functions (see Appendix I). Part two will inspect other documents containing parallel texts to section one of BD 127, including section four of BD 181, and passages from the Litany of Re. Moreover, epigraphic evidence mentioning the deities, i.e., the deities of the cavern invoked in the section in question are examined from a corpus of miscellaneous documents including BD 144 and BD 168, the Book of Breathing, and the Book of Traversing Eternity. Last but not least, the roles of these deities in the Netherworld are investigated to find out about their correlation with the deceased, the deities who control them and which parts of the Netherworld do they inhabit.