Volume 2 / Part 3 — Chapter V. Apophis.

The Naturalistic Theory of Apophis—The Serpent of Time—Epic of the Worm—The Asp of Melite—Vanquishers of Time—Nachash-Beriach—The Serpent-Spy—Treading on Serpents.

The considerations advanced in the previous chapter enable us to dismiss with facility many of the rationalistic interpretations which have been advanced to explain the monstrous serpents of sacred books by reference to imaginary species supposed to be now extinct. Flying serpents, snakes many-headed, rain-bringing, woman-hating, &c., may be suffered to survive as the fauna of bibliolatrous imaginations. Such forms, however, are of such mythologic importance that it is necessary to watch carefully against this method of realistic interpretation, especially as there are many actual characteristics of serpents sufficiently mysterious to conspire with it. A recent instance of this literalism may here be noticed.

Apart from the extreme improbability that African exploration should have brought no rumours of such a monster if it existed, it may be said concerning Mr. Cooper’s theory: (1.) If, indeed, the references cited were to a reptile now unknown, we might be led by mythologic analogy to expect that it would have been revered beyond either the Asp or the Cobra. In proportion to the fear has generally been the exaltation of its objects. Primitive peoples have generally gathered courage to pour invective upon evil monsters when—either from their non-existence or rarity—there was least danger of its being practically resented as a personal affront. (2.) The regular folds of Apophis on the sarcophagus of Seti I. and elsewhere are so evidently mystical and conventional that, apparently, they refer to a serpent-form only as the guilloche on a wall may refer to sea-waves. Apophis (or Apap) would have been a decorative artist to fold himself in such order.

God having made me worm, I make you—smoke.

Though safe your nameless essence from my stroke,

Yet do I gnaw no less

Love in the heart, stars in the livid space,—

God jealous,—making vacant thus your place,—

And steal your witnesses.

Since the star flames, man would be wrong to teach

That the grave’s worm cannot such glory reach;

Naught real is save me.

Within the blue, as ‘neath the marble slab I lie,

I bite at once the star within the sky,

The apple on the tree.

To gnaw yon star is not more tough to me

Than hanging grapes on vines of Sicily;

I clip the rays that fall;

Eternity yields not to splendours brave.

Fly, ant, all creatures die, and nought can save

The constellations all.

The starry ship, high in the ether sea,

Must split and wreck in the end: this thing shall be:

The broad-ringed Saturn toss

To ruin: Sirius, touched by me, decay,

As the small boat from Ithaca away

It was in this concealment from the outward eye that the Serpent was able to assume such monstrous proportions to the eye of imagination; and, indeed, it is not beyond conjecture that this serpent of Melite, coming in conflict with Osirian worship, was degraded and demonised into that evil monster (Apophis) whom Horus slew to avenge his destruction of Osiris (for he was often identified with Typhon).

Though Horus cursed and slew this terrible demon-serpent, he reappears in all Egyptian Mythology with undiminished strength, and all evil powers were the brood of himself or Typhon, who were sometimes described as brothers and sometimes as the same beings. From the ‘Ritual of the Dead’ we learn that it was the high privilege and task of the heroic dead to be reconstructed and go forth to encounter and subdue the agents of Apophis, who sent out to engage them the crocodiles Seb, Hem, and Shui, and other crocodiles from north, south, east, and west; the hero having conquered these, acquires their might, and next prevails over the walking viper Ru; and so on with other demons called ‘precursors of Apophis,’ until their prince himself is encountered and slain, all the hero’s guardian deities attending to fix a knife in each of the monster’s folds. These are the Vanquishers of Time,—the immortal.

In Apophis we find the Serpent fairly developed to a principle of evil. He is an ‘accuser of the sun;’ the twelve gateways into Hades are surmounted by his representatives, which the Sun must pass—twelve hours of night. He is at once the ‘Nachash beriach’ and ‘Nachash aktalon’—the ‘Cross-bar serpent’ and the ‘Tortuous serpent’—which we meet with in Isa. xxvii. 1: ‘In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent.’ The marginal translation in the English version is ‘crossing like a bar,’ instead of piercing, and the Vulgate has serpens vectis. This refers to the moral function of the serpent, as barring the way, or guarding the door. No doubt this is the ‘crooked serpent’ of Job xxvi. 13, for the astrological sense of it does not invalidate the terrestrial significance. Imagination could only project into the heavens what it had learned on earth. Bochart in identifying ‘Nachash-beriach’ as ‘the flying Serpent,’ is quite right: the Seraph, or winged Serpent, which barred the way to the tree of life in Eden, and in some traditions was the treacherous guard at the gate of the garden, and which bit Israel in the wilderness, was this same protean Apophis. For such tasks, and to soar into the celestial planisphere, the Serpent must needs have wings; and thus it is already far on its way to become the flying Dragon. But in one form, as the betrayer of man, it must lose its wings and crawl upon the ground for ever. The Serpent is thus not so much agathodemon and kakodemon in one form, as a principle of destructiveness which is sometimes employed by the deity to punish his enemies, as Horus employs fiery Kheti, but sometimes requires to be himself punished.

Through many associations of this kind the Serpent became at an early period an agent of ordeal. Any one handling it with impunity was regarded as in league with it, or specially hedged about by the deity whose ’hands formed the crooked serpent.’ It may have been as snake-charmers that Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh and influenced his imagination; or, if the story be a myth, its existence still shows that serpent performances would then have been regarded as credentials of divine authentication. So when Paul was shipwrecked on Malta, where a viper is said to have fastened on his hand, the barbarians, having at first inferred that he was a murderer, ‘whom though he hath escaped the sea, yet Vengeance suffereth not to live,’ concluded he was a god when they found him unharmed. Innumerable traditions preceded the words ascribed to Christ (Luke x. 19), ‘Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.’ It is instructive to compare this sentence attributed to Christ with the notion of the barbarians concerning Paul’s adventure, whatever it may have been. Paul’s familiarity with the Serpent seems to them proof that he is a god. Such also is the idea represented in Isa. xi. 8, ‘The sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp.’ But the idea of treading on serpents marks a period more nearly corresponding to that of the infant Hercules strangling the serpents. Yet though these two conceptions—serpent-treading, and serpent-slaying—approach each other, they are very different in source and significance, both morally and historically. The word used in Luke, πατειῖν, conveys the idea of walking over something in majesty, not in hostility; it must be interpreted by the next sentence (x. 20), ‘Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you (τα πνεύματα ὑποτάσσεται).’ The serpent-slayer or dragon-slayer is not of Semitic origin. The awful supremacy of Jehovah held all the powers of destruction chained to his hand; and to ask man if he could draw out Leviathan with a hook was only another form of reminding him of his own inferiority to the creator and lord of Leviathan. How true the Semitic ideas running through the Bible, and especially represented in the legend of Paul in Malta, are to the barbarian nature is illustrated by an incident related in Mr. Brinton’s ‘Myths of the New World.’ The pious founder of the Moravian Brotherhood, Count Zinzendorf, was visiting a missionary station among the Shawnees in the Wyoming Valley, America. Recent quarrels with the white people had so irritated the red men that they resolved to make him their victim. After he had retired to his hut several of the braves softly peered in. Count Zinzendorf was seated before a fire, lost in perusal of the Scriptures; and while the red men gazed they saw what he did not—a huge rattlesnake trailing across his feet to gather itself in a coil before the comfortable warmth of the fire. Immediately they forsook their murderous purpose, and retired noiselessly, convinced that this was indeed a divine man.