Book of the Dead (39)

Among the more than 200 known chapters of the Book of the Dead genre chapters 7 and 39 are entirely devoted to Apopis, the representative of darkness and chaos in Egyptian mythology. The present edition contains a translation of and extensive commentary on the text of the longer of the two, chapter 39, with a hieroglyphic transcription of six representative manuscripts from the 18th Dynasty down to the Ptolemaic period. Apopis, the rebel against cosmic order, is traditionally represented as a giant serpent and documented in a great number of cosmological and ritual texts of the Middle Kingdom and later. He is the ever-returning opponent of the sun god Re', trying to halt the course of the sun boat. His emerging from the chaos waters is especially feared at night. Although time and again the attack is repelled and Apopis driven back or bound and annihilated by the sun god's helpers, he always resurges and continues to be a threat to the cosmic balance. Precisely this is the theme of chapter 39, which is less a description of events than a violent vociferation on the part of gods and goddesses against the enemy. An attempt is made in the commentary to reconstruct the course of events.