Asiatic People in the Book of Gates

The image depicts four men in a row, all facing right, rendered in a traditional Egyptian artistic style with brown skin and dark, chin-length hair bound with a white headband. They wear distinctive, patterned kilts featuring vibrant red, blue, and white vertical stripes with hanging fringe. Above each figure are columns of Egyptian hieroglyphic text and small, schematic icons including birds, serpents, and ritual vessels. The figures are uniform in their posture, with one arm hanging by their side and the other slightly advanced, reflecting typical iconographic representations of non-Egyptian populations in funerary literature.

This rendering is based on scenes from the 'Book of Gates,' a major New Kingdom funerary text found in royal tombs (such as those of Seti I and Ramesses IV) which describes the journey of the sun god Ra through the underworld. In these texts, 'Asiatics' (Canaanites/Syro-Palestinians) are categorized alongside other ethnic groups known to the Egyptians as part of the orderly cosmos created by the gods.