The Egyptian Book of Gates describes twelve divisions in the sun god’s journey through the night.
The Book of Gates is a New Kingdom funerary composition, especially associated with royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. It presents the sun god’s nightly passage through the underworld, where gates separate successive regions.
Each division corresponds broadly to an hour of the night. The journey includes guardians, divine beings, and scenes describing the renewal of the sun before dawn. The dead king is connected with this cosmic cycle of death and rebirth.
The twelve divisions are sometimes confused with the number of gates in other Egyptian underworld traditions. Egyptian funerary books were not one standardized system, and different compositions organize the afterlife in different ways.