Apep

Apep, called Apophis by the Greeks, is the giant serpent of chaos in ancient Egyptian religion who attacks the sun god Ra's boat every night in the underworld and must be defeated again each day.

The Story

Every evening, the Egyptians believed, the sun god Ra sailed his boat into the Duat, the underworld, and every night a monstrous serpent named Apep lay in wait to stop him. If Apep succeeded, the sun would never rise again and the ordered world, called maat, would collapse back into chaos.

Apep's attacks were not a one-time battle but a nightly struggle that never ended. Other gods rode in the sun boat to defend it. In some texts the god Seth stands at the prow and spears the serpent. In the funerary guide called the Amduat, the snake is bound and cut with knives so the boat can pass. A famous vignette of the Book of the Dead shows a cat, a form of Ra, cutting off Apep's head with a knife beside a sacred tree. Each sunrise meant Apep had been beaten back, but never destroyed for good.

Appearance and Powers

Apep is a gigantic snake, sometimes shown in many coils, and never a winged or legged dragon. Some texts say his roar echoes through the underworld and that he tries to swallow the river on which the sun boat sails, leaving it stranded on a sandbank. Unlike most Egyptian gods, Apep had no temples or worship. He stood for everything outside creation, the darkness that existed before the world and always threatened to return.

Origins and Sources

Apep appears in Egyptian texts from the Middle Kingdom onward, including the Coffin Texts, and becomes prominent in New Kingdom underworld books painted in royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, such as the Amduat and the Book of Gates. Priests did more than tell the story; they joined the fight. The Book of Overthrowing Apep, preserved in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus (about 312 BCE) in the British Museum, contains spells for cursing the serpent. Priests drew or modeled images of Apep, then spat on them, stabbed them, trampled them, and burned them, so that the ritual would help Ra win in the real world. In the Late Period, Apep was sometimes associated with Seth, who had by then become a god of disorder.

Legacy

Apep belongs to the same family of chaos serpents as the Babylonian Tiamat and the biblical Leviathan, though he developed independently. The near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis, discovered in 2004, was named after him, partly because it was briefly thought to pose a risk of hitting Earth. Apep also appears in modern fiction, games, and television as a demonic snake. See Apep among Draconika's famous dragons and in the dragon species list.

Related

• Mehen: Mehen, "the Coiled One," is the protective serpent god of ancient Egypt who wraps his coils around the sun god Ra as he travels through the underworld each night, guarding him against the chaos serpent Apep.
• Ouroboros: The Ouroboros is a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, a symbol of eternity and endless cycles first found in ancient Egypt and later central to Greek alchemy and Western esoteric art.
• Tiamat: Tiamat is the primordial salt-water sea goddess of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, who raised an army of monsters against the gods and was split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
• Leviathan: Leviathan is the great sea monster of the Hebrew Bible, a fire-breathing, scale-armored serpent of the deep that only God can tame, descended from the Canaanite sea serpent Lotan.
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• Dragon Species
• The History of Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003)
• R. O. Faulkner, "The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus," Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 22–24 (1936–1938)
• Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, trans. David Lorton (Cornell University Press, 1999)

Cite this entry: “Apep,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/apep.