Duat

The Duat or Tuat (Ancient Egyptian: Hieroglyph: 𓇽 romanized: dwꜣt) is a concept in ancient Egyptian mythology involving death. It is most often seen as a realm where people go after they die. Due to linguistic shifts within Ancient Egypt, the Duat has also been called Te (Coptic: Ⲧⲏ, romanized: Tē) and Amenthes (Ancient Greek: Ἀμένθης, romanized: Aménthēs).
What is known of the Duat derives principally from funerary texts such as the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, the Coffin Texts, the Amduat, and the Book of the Dead, among many other sources. It is generally known best as a dark subterranean realm that not only houses the deceased, but a variety of deities. Common deities depicted in these texts are Osiris, Anubis, Thoth, Horus, and Maat in various forms. While all of these documents involve the Duat, each of them fulfilled a different purpose and depict the Duat in a variety of unique ways.

Overview
This realm is most often depicted as a setting for a variety of rituals and mythological events, especially the journey and judgment of the soul after death and the nightly rebirth of the sun god Ra. The Duat is divided into sections by twelve guarded gates that represent each hour of the night and are closely associated with the journey of Ra and prominently feature Osiris, god of the Duat and personification of rebirth.

Geography
To connect this realm to the material world, burial chambers formed touching-points between the mundane world and the Duat. As such, the west bank of the Nile was associated with the dead and funeral barges would mimic the sun god Ra's journey through the sky during the day. To further this connection, the Duat is often described as having many realistic features such as rivers, islands, fields, paths, and lakes. Although, texts also describe fantastic lakes of fire, walls of iron, and trees of turquoise. These lands are described as being dark and were partitioned with a series of gates, and mostly identified as Shetit, a dangerous land translated as 'The Beyond'. Descriptions of the Duat often follow this same theme with titles such as 'The Hidden Place', described as a region where mortals and the divine are absent; and 'Road of the Secret Things of Re-stau', a road that Ra passes in his nightly journey.…