Note 1 — Chapter V · Apophis.

Mr. W. R. Cooper1 supposes the evil serpent of Egyptian Mythology to have a real basis in ‘a large and unidentified species of coluber, of great strength and hideous longitude,’ which ‘was, even from the earliest ages, associated as the representative of spiritual, and occasionally physical evil, and was named Hof, Rehof, or Apophis,’ the ‘destroyer, the enemy of the gods, and the devourer of the souls of men.’ That such a creature, he adds, ‘once inhabited the Libyan desert, we have the testimony of both Hanno the Carthaginian and Lucan the Roman, and if it is now no longer an inhabitant of that region, it is probably owing to the advance of civilisation having driven it farther south.’