Ra: Encyclopedia II - Ra - Solar barge

Ra - Solar barge

In order to pass through Duat (the underworld) each night, so that he might rise in the morning, the fiery Ra was compelled to use a boat to avoid being extinguished by the waters. It was Maàt, i.e. order, the antithesis of chaos, that guided the course of the boat. At the helm of the boat stood Thoth, representative of the moon, who symbolically stood next to Horus, who, in early egyptian myth, represented the sky, and whose dark eye was the moon. It was Horus who steered.

Many of the other gods travelled in the boat with them, and one of them, possibly with the assistant Mehen (who may instead simply be nothing more than a boardgame), defended the boat from attack by the monster of darkness, who wished to devour Ra. In early mythology, it was Set who was the hero defending the boat, and Apep who was the attacker, but in later myth, after Set became regarded as evil, it was Thoth who defended and Set who was the demon. Temporary failure to protect Ra was said to be the cause of solar eclipses, and mere difficulty in doing so was said to cause bad weather.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Solar barge", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki