What is Amenta in Egyptian mythology?

Amenta is the name Gerald Massey uses, in his 1907 book Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World, for the Egyptian world of the dead. It comes from the Egyptian Amentet, “the West”: the sun sets in the west, and the dead were thought to go where the sun goes. Egyptologists today usually call this world below the Duat, and older books often write Amenti. In Massey’s book, Amenta is the stage for the whole drama of death and rising again.

The West, in Egyptian belief: Many of Egypt’s great cemeteries lie on the west bank of the Nile, as at Thebes, and the dead were called “westerners”. Osiris, ruler of the dead, bore the title Khentamentiu, “Foremost of the Westerners”. A goddess, Amentet, shown with the sign of the West on her head, welcomed the dead into the next life.
The Duat, the world below: Egyptologists call the underworld itself the Duat (older books write Tuat). Texts painted in the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, such as the Amduat (“What is in the Duat”) and the Book of Gates, follow the boat of the sun god through the twelve hours of the night. It passes gates and dangers, among them the great serpent Apep, until the sun is born again at dawn. The dead hoped to travel with the sun and rise with it.
Amenta in Gerald Massey’s reading: Massey uses Amenta for the whole world below and calls it “the earth of eternity”. He reads it in two layers. In the myths, it is the passage the sun takes under the earth by night, which he says the god Ptah hollowed out. In religion, the same path became the soul’s journey after death, through the judgment toward new life. He calls these the mysteries of Amenta, and argues that the Exodus and many gospel scenes first belonged to that world below, as myth, before they were told as history.
What scholars say now: In broad outline, Massey’s picture fits the Egyptian texts: the sun’s night journey and the road of the dead to judgment are both there. Egyptologists keep Amentet for the West and its goddess, and call the underworld the Duat. They do not accept his claims that the Exodus or the gospel stories began as dramas of Amenta.
Where the word lives on: The Egyptian word outlived the old religion. In Coptic, the last stage of the Egyptian language, written by Egypt’s Christians, Amente became the word for the underworld, and in Christian use for hell.
In Massey’s words: “After the life on earth there was a resurrection in Amenta, the earth of eternity, for the human soul evolved on earth.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book IV, p. 197)
In the app: Trainer › Word Trainer. In the app, the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Amenta and Tuat beside Amentet and the Duat, and Book IV follows the dead through Amenta with a plain-words note under every part.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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