When Chaos Kills Every God in Egyptian Mythology
18:37 Share

Hey everyone, welcome to Mythology Explained. In today's video, we're going to discuss Apophis, the chaos serpent, the baleful bane of life itself, the most powerful monster in all of Egyptian mythology. So great was his power that it took the combined strength of many gods to overcome him, and so great was the threat he posed that his victory would unleash absolute destruction, bringing about the end of the Egyptian gods and, more broadly, of the universe itself, returning every mote of matter and particle of energy back to the infinite chaos from whence everything first came. Alright, let's get into it.Apophis was depicted as a great serpent and sometimes as a colossal crocodile. He was an incarnation of disorder and destruction - the supreme incarnation of disorder and destruction - and the arch-nemesis of Ra, whom Apophis fought ad nauseam, the two of them meeting in the underworld each night and battling for the fate of all creation. The eyes of Apophis were especially perilous, and his terrible roar was said to be deafening, able to resound throughout the entire underworld. The movement of his body shook the earth, causing earthquakes, and the hidden sandbanks in the Nile that were so treacherous to ships were equated with his coils. Medieval dragons are thought to perhaps be modeled after a hybrid representation of Apophis that conflated both his snake and crocodile forms, and the python, which could unhinge its jaw to swallow large prey whole, is thought to have been a principal inspiration for Apophis, in terms of both appearance and action, the latter being to symbolically swallow and destroy the world by killing Ra. There was a plethora of fierce and frightening phenomena associated with Apophis, including thunder, earthquakes, darkness, disorder, storms of every kind, and chaos. Depictions of Apophis varied, sometimes shown as a coiled serpent, but most often shown under attack by Ra and his supporters. Mau, the divine cat, the guardian of the tree of life, and one of the manifestations of Ra, was commonly shown, knife in paw, cutting Apophis to pieces.