Summary
Apophis, Apep in Egyptian, is a great serpent and Ra's greatest enemy. The texts tell nothing of his birth and do not make him a king contesting Ra's throne; he is the danger that blocks the sun's boat every day to stop it. Apophis was not worshipped; he was cursed and burned in effigy every day.
His story is the story of the night. At sunset Ra enters the underworld in his boat and travels on a river that runs through the middle of the earth as the Nile runs through Egypt. In the seventh hour of the Amduat, the book of "What is in the Netherworld", Apophis lies in wait on his sandbank, trying to ground the boat on it. In other texts Apophis gulps down all the river's water so that the boat runs aground, and is forced by magic to vomit it back. In the seventh hour the serpent Mehen coils round Ra to protect him, Isis stretches out her arms towards Apophis and enchants him, Set stands with her, and other deities throw chains and ropes on Apophis and cut him with knives.
In other texts Set fights Apophis with his own hand. In the Contendings of Horus and Seth Set tells the council: "I slay the enemy of Pre every day, standing in the prow of the Bark-of-Millions, and no other god can do it." In the Book of the Dead a picture shows a cat, one of Ra's forms, sitting under a tree on the eastern horizon and cutting off the serpent's head. Then Apophis comes back the next night; he never dies a death without return.
People took part in this war. The papyrus of Nesmin, a priest of Amun-Ra at Thebes, dated 305 BCE, contains the Book of Overthrowing Apep in columns 22–32 and the Names of Apep in columns 32–33. The book says it is recited every day in the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak: a spell for spitting on Apophis, a spell for trampling him with the left foot, a spell for taking the spear, a spell for binding him, a spell for the knife, a spell for the fire. Apophis is drawn in green ink on a new sheet of papyrus, a wax figure of him is made with his name written on it in green ink, and it is thrown into the fire before Ra when he appears in the morning, at noon and when he sets in the evening. The same book holds the creation account in which the Lord of All says "It was I who came into being as Khepri", under the title "The book of knowing the creations of Ra and of felling Apep", so the beginning of creation and the felling of the serpent are recited together. The Royal Collection holds an Amduat with this very seventh hour, buried with a priest named Nesmin who bears the same title and the same mother's name.
The idea Apophis's story turns on is that order is not won once but guarded every night. The danger for the Egyptians is not a rival king but a force that would stop the sun's course by drinking the river it sails on. So Ra needs Isis's magic, Set's spear and the deities' knives every night, and the king needs a priest every day to spit on the serpent's image and burn it. The project's Egyptian essay reads Apophis as the darkness that tries to swallow the sun each night.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Egyptian writes it Ꜥꜣpp, with ʿayn, then the sign ꜣ, then two ps; Demotic writes it ꜥpp without that sign, and in Coptic it became ⲁⲫⲱⲫ, the Copts' word for a giant. Egyptian ʿayn is Arabic ʿayn, as in the name of Ra, and Egyptian p is Arabic b, as in the name of Khepri, which leaves Arabic ʿabba, with its ʿayn and its doubled b. In Lane, ʿabba is to drink water without taking breath, to gulp it down uninterruptedly; ʿubāb is the main body of a torrent, its height, abundance and waves; ʿabba al-baḥr, the sea rose high with many waves; ʿabʿāb is a tall man; and yaʿbūb a river that runs vehemently. On this reading Apophis is al-ʿabbāb, the one who gulps the water down, and the tall one, huge as a flood. That is what the story makes him: a serpent who swallows the river until the sun's boat runs aground, and a giant in the language of the Egyptians' descendants.
Linguistic Root
Al-ʿabbāb
| Form | Reading | Witness |
|---|---|---|
| Ꜥꜣpp | Hieroglyphic Egyptian: ʿayn, ꜣ, p, p | Egyptian dictionary |
| ꜥpp | Demotic, without ꜣ | Coptic dictionary |
| ⲁⲫⲱⲫ, ⲁⲫⲟⲫⲓ | Bohairic Coptic: giant | Coptic dictionary |
| Ἄποφις / Apophis | The Greek form by which he is best known |
The Global Egyptian Museum takes the name to mean "giant" or "giant snake", and Coptic bears this out: in the Bohairic Coptic Bible Nimrod is called the "giant hunter" with this word, and so are the giants who fell of old in Ezekiel.
The comparison with ʿabba keeps the ʿayn in place and makes the two Egyptian ps two bs, which in Arabic are a doubled b. The Demotic spelling ꜥpp is ʿabba letter for letter. The sign ꜣ of the hieroglyphic spelling has no counterpart in ʿabba, as it has none in maʿa in the name of Maat; that is the point still open in the reading. Lane's ʿabba holds both pictures of the story: water drunk in one draught, and height and abundance.
Other readings in the essay
The project's Egyptian essay writes the Egyptian pronunciation /ʕɑpɑp/, with ʿayn at the start, then reads the name from ʾabba with a hamza, what grows wildly, and from ʾabb as ruin, and compares Hebrew אבד, ʾābad, to perish. In its deepening section it makes uff, the word of disgust and aversion, the strongest, so that Apophis is "the eternal spirit of hatred for Ra's light", or habba, the gusting storm. The doubled root the essay proposes is our root: put back the ʿayn that the essay itself writes in its pronunciation in place of the hamza, and ʾabba becomes ʿabba. Lane also has ʿabba al-nabt, the plant grew tall, which meets the essay's sense of growth. Uff and habba set hamza and h where Egyptian has ʿayn, and Hebrew ʾābad has a d with no counterpart.
Key Mythic Narratives
What the book does to Apophis
Nesmin's book calls Apophis "the rebel", "the tortoise" and "the ill-disposed one", tells him he has neither arms nor legs, and orders him to turn upside down in the Lake of Nun. It sets the fire of the Eye of Horus to devour him and puts fire in him from the four directions, commanded in the south by Sothis and Anukis, Khnum's companion at Elephantine, in the north by Wadjet, in the west by Ha and in the east by Sopd. The names of the king's enemies, living and dead, are written in wax with Apophis's name and burned with him. Book of Overthrowing Apep. In a late text seventy-seven spells are recited over the place of his execution, so that his soul is given to the fire and his corpse to the flame of Sekhmet. Egyptian dictionary (TLA data), Apophis, attestations.
Who fights him
The fighter changes with the text. In the Amduat Isis enchants him and Set stands with her; in the Contendings Set kills him at the prow of the boat; in Nesmin's book Horus takes "his spear of iron" and batters the heads of Ra's enemies; in the Book of the Dead the cat cuts off his head. Rites like those of Karnak were held in other temples too, among them Edfu.
Symbolic Reading
The project's Egyptian essay reads Ra's journey as a description of the sun's course and makes Apophis the darkness that tries to swallow the sun each night, and Ra's victory every dawn sunrise itself. The other essay, in its deepening section, compares Apophis's attack with the Qur'anic verse "He covers the night with the day, which pursues it swiftly".
The Global Egyptian Museum likens Apophis's coils to sandbanks in the water, on which he means to ground the boat. Anyone who knows the Nile knows this danger: a boat stranded on a sandbank when the water falls. The Egyptian picture of darkness is taken from the boatman's life, and the war on the serpent is a war on whatever keeps the water from carrying the ship. This is an interpretation of the image, not a report in the text.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
Apophis blocks the sun's boat as serpents and dragons threaten the world's order in the gods' fight with sea and dragon, but his defeat builds no palace and makes no sky, as in the stories of Baal and Marduk; it is repeated every night. The project's Canaanite essay compares him with Litan, the twisting serpent Baal struck, and the Norse essay with Jörmungandr, the world serpent, and with Nidhogg, who gnaws the tree's root while the norns water it every day. Closest to what Apophis does is Vṛtra in Rigveda 1.32, the serpent who held back the waters until Indra struck him and they ran to the sea: both keep the water from its course.
Ra's journey, which Apophis attacks in the seventh hour, is the descent that recurs every night in Descent to the Underworld. Global Egyptian Museum, Amduat.