The "Book of the Night" appearing for the first time under Seti I is the last Egyptian composition of the royal tombs representing the hereafter in the form of the sun's progression through the hours of the night, like the older "Amduat" and "Book of the Gates" - whereas the younger "Book of the Caverns" and "Book of the Earth" adopt a different structure. The form of the "Book of the Night" shows analogies with the two older books: each hour is divided into three registers with the representation of the sun in the bark in the middle register and the hours are separated by doors. But its contents differ fundamentally from these two compositions. The cosmographic component and the descriptions of phenomena affecting the sungod, so important in the "Amduat" and in the "Book of the Gates", have no longer a central function in the "Book of the Night". The purposes of the sungod's nocturnal journey are defined in the introduction: the sun is coming "in order to judge the inhabitants of the Duat, to know the condition of the Westerners and to provide for all the small cattle which he has created", a programm giving a preponderant place to the destiny of human beings in the hereafter. This topic is represented in the lower registers of the composition which contain a "catalogue" of categories of humans: these figures are documenting the fate of the justified, of the damned, of the strangers and the repercussions of the sun's appearance (different stages of awakening) or of its absence (sleep, lamentations, aimless wandering, deprivation of liberty). The human sphere is complemented in the upper registers by a procession of gods or geniuses documenting the divine sphere of the hereafter. And for the first time, the representation of the pharaoh's nocturnal journey through the otherworld occupies an important place in the books' iconography.