Apophis

The Serpent of Chaos

Domain: Chaos, Darkness & Destruction
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Element: Darkness
Relics of Power: Devouring Coils

Speak with Apophis

The full Codex

4 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Ancient Egyptians

Region

Nile Valley, Egypt

Period

c. 3100 BC – 400 AD

The Egyptian gods were worshipped for over three millennia along the banks of the Nile, with monumental temples at Karnak, Luxor, and Heliopolis. The pharaohs were held to be divine, and life revolved around cosmic order (Maat) and preparation for the afterlife. The cult endured until the rise of Christianity in Roman Egypt.

At the Opet festival, Amun's sacred barque sailed from Karnak to Luxor amid celebrating crowds. In the temples, priests woke, dressed, and fed the god's statue every day, and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley carried the deities to visit the shore of the dead.

At a glance

Āapep (Apep, Apophis in Greek) is the great serpent of chaos in Egyptian funerary texts: the enemy that attacks the boat of the sun-god Ra every day and is defeated every day. In Budge's translations he appears in three ways. In the Book of the Dead he is the threat waiting under the place of sunrise, and the spells of the deceased drive him back. In the divisions of the Duat (the Am-Tuat) he is a serpent chained and cut up by gods armed with knives. In a late papyrus he is the target of a destruction ritual with a wax figure, spittle and fire. The study rests on Budge translations from 1895 to 1905 that were opened and read; the modern critical editions of the spells (Faulkner, Allen) were not opened.

10 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The colossal serpent, the darkness, the storm and the eclipse

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, vol. I. translation: 1904 edition (archive.org, OCR text); passages read: pp. 11, 62, 183-184, 196-202, 228-232, 269-272, 276-278, 324-328. read
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Egyptian Heaven and Hell, vol. I: The Book of Am-Tuat. translation: 1905 edition (archive.org, OCR text); passages read: sixth, seventh and twelfth divisions. read
E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the Dead. translation: English translation of 1895 (Project Gutenberg, no. 7145); passages read: introduction, chs. VII, XV, XXXI–XLII. read

Name and epithets

Budge writes Āapep, the spelling he keeps in the three books consulted; in the Am-Tuat and in The Gods of the Egyptians the same serpent appears as Apep and Apepi.

In the ancient sources

Book of the Dead, chapter XXXIX (Papyrus of Ani), in Budge's version, undated in the passage read (Papyrus of Ani).

The myths

The serpent under the place of dawn. In the introduction to The Book of the Dead, Budge says that the rising sun was threatened every morning by a fearful monster, Āapep, hidden under the place of sunrise and waiting to…

Worship and archaeology

What Budge's translations describe is not a cult worshipping Apep but a service against him. The papyrus of Nesi-Amsu records it as a rite used in Upper Egypt, and the Books of Overthrowing Apep, according to Budge, wer…

How the god was depicted

According to Budge, in the papyri Apep "is always represented" as a serpent, with a knife stuck in each undulation of the body.

What scholars debate

Origin of the monster: real serpent or primeval mist. Budge gives two origins that do not agree. At one point Apep was a gigantic serpent from a mountain on the west bank of the Nile, and he cites vertebrae of an enormo…

After antiquity

Budge sees in the worm that does not die of Isaiah 66:24 and in Coptic accounts of martyrs, with seven-headed serpents that devour the soul, a direct allusion to the great serpent of the Egyptian underworld, and he link…

Did you know?

The ritual of the papyrus of Nesi-Amsu orders the names of all the male and female devils the officiant fears to be written down, with those of their fathers, mothers and children, and burnt together with the figure of…

Codex relic

Devouring Coils. The colossal coils with which it tries to swallow the sun's barque and plunge the world into darkness.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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