Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
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3 The term autobiography is rather misleading because these texts are often not auto- (in the sense of
authorship) nor are they biographies at all; see the
discussion in my Tomb Inscriptions: The Case of the
I versus Autobiography in Ancient Egypt, in Human Affairs: A Postdisciplinary Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences 13 (2003): 17996.
4 E. Brovarski, The Inscribed Material of the
First Intermediate Period from Naga ed Deir (Ph.D.
diss., University of Chicago, 1989), Appendix C, The
Date of Ankhti of Moalla, pp. 101327. See also
D. Spanel, The Date of Ankhti of Moalla, in GM
78 (1984): 8794.
5 J. Vandier, Moalla, BdE 18 (Cairo, 1950), inscription IV.10.
6 J. C. Moreno Garca, tudes sur ladministration,
le pouvoir et lidologie en gypte, de lAncien au
Moyen Empire, gyptiaca Leodiensia 4 (Lige, 1997),
pp. 192; see my Hungersnte in der Ersten Zwischenzeit zwischen Topos und Realitt, in Discussions
in Egyptology 42 (1998): 8497, and my article Versorgung mit Getreide: Historische Entwicklungen und
intertextuelle Bezge zwischen ausgehendem Alten
Reich und Erster Zwischenzeit aus Achmim, in SAK
26 (1998): 81117.
201
202
Verse 1 may be a topos of the inverted world as found commonly in works of literature
such as the Admonitions or the Foretelling of Neferti that evoke the PoR, but dateat
least in written formto the Middle Kingdom.11 Topoi of the inverted world include the
theme of natural disorder or even disaster. The alliterations p.t : jgp(.tj) and t : tw in l.c.
verse 1 can be seen as an intentional poetic feature.12 Tz with the meaning sandbank is
also attested in other texts from the PoR that describe the shortage of water.13 The phonetic writing pp is determined with the sign of a snake (
, Gardiner, Sign-list, I 14)14
15
indicating Apophiss snakelike nature. Unlike Seth, Apophis was never designated ntr
god. Furthermore, he was never represented in statues because he never received a cult
of his own.
Apophis is used here metaphorically. Such a usage is meaningful only if both the name
and the gure are more or less familiar. The absence of Apophis in sources dating to the
Old Kingdom, however, might be more than accidental. The gure of Apophis seems to
be originally a concept of popular religion16 outside the decorum of the restricted sources
of the elite-culture that survived from the Old Kingdom, while statements about the netherworld are largely lacking in the Pyramid Texts because the concept of the hereafter that
Apophis
203
they depict is mainly celestial. The great shifts in the PoR that included changes in religious belief and in the system of decorum might have led to Apophis being accepted by
the culture of the elite.17 As in the Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods, features appear
in the PoR that were not canonized in the Old and the Middle Kingdom. An interesting
parallel between the Predynastic Period and the PoR is provided by such fabulous animals
as the grifn, which are depicted on, for example, a Late Predynastic slate palette and in
tombs at Beni Hassan.18 Ideas from folklore were occasionally taken over into the restricted culture of the elite, and one of the periods in which such things happened more
easily is the PoR.
Apophis is mentioned more frequently in the Middle Kingdom Cofn Texts, mostly as an
enemy of either the sungod or the dead. Spell 414 describes him as a snake who attacks the
bark of Ra; his snakelike being is also indicated by the determinative (see, for example,
CT V, 244a
,
,
). He is evidently a snake living in the water.19 His
mythological role is strongly marked in the underworld books of the New Kingdom. Magical spells against Apophis were numerous, and some were collected in the form of books.20
It seems possible to interpret the name pp as a composite word, an exocentric composite,21 consisting of the two elements great and pp roar, blabber, babble. The
etymological meaning of pp would then be great babbler. Pp seems to be an onomatopoeic word imitating the inarticulate or even nonverbal sound of this mythological watersnake. Personal names such as Ppy are comparable in their use of the sound p. Together
with names such as Mmj, Ttj, among others, they constitute a group of Lallnamen.22 The
doubling of the letter p intensies this quality.23 The snake merely repeats the plosive
sound p as a kind of gibbering. Characterizing speech by onomatopoeia is very common
in Egyptian, as seen in the roots hm and zm.24 This interpretation of Apophis as
(great) with the onomatopoeic pp is supported by Bohairic afwf or afwp giant, which
is a clear derivative of pp.25 It might be possible to understand pp as an onomatopoeic
word for a snake, although no pp root meaning snake has been identied.26 The syllabic
structure of the word Apophis is u pa1pu(w).27
204
An alternative to the above explanation would be to derive the name of the mythological snake pp from the word p, which is attested once in the Old Kingdom, in the tomb
inscription of Ti (Urk. I, 174, 5 f.). Here p (
) is used complementary to msqq:
[my rdy(=j) hpr] msqq.t=f nb q.t
ny rdy(=j) hpr p=f nb h ntr
[Never will I permit] that anything he hates (msqq) [should happen]eternally;
never will I permit that his p should happen before the great god.
Here too p could be an onomatopoeic word composed of the root and the plosive
sound p with the meaning stammer. On the other hand, p( p) may be just onomatopoeic. In combination, the glottal stop and the ayin were used to characterize foreign,
barbaric languages by onomatopoeia in the root ( j).28 The deceased should not stammer but should speak clearly and articulately before the great god in the hereafter. According to this interpretation pp seems to be a construct on the intensive pattern ABC/C29
with the meaning the one who stammers most. Here one may compare the sea monster
tannin in the Hebrew Bible. This term is also found in the sense of serpent. The etymology of tannin is uncertain, but it has been suggested that it is related to the root TNH (recount, rehearse) as lament, howl.30
The noblest function of language is communication.31 Meaning and relationships are
founded by it, and the entire web of culture depends on communication. Apophis, however, is strictly anticommunicative. In the underworld books, Apophis appears as the gure of darkness and embodiment of anticommunication. Language endows meaning and
relation, and Apophis is the negation of precisely these ideas. In the seventh hour of the
Amduat about Apophis it is said:
jn hrw=f ssm ntr.w r=f
It is his (Apophiss) voice that leads the gods to him32
31 For the importance of communication in Egyptian civilization, see J. Assmann, Maat: Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Alten gypten (Munich,
1990).
32 E. Hornung, ed., Texte zum Amduat, Teil II: Langfassung, 4. bis 8. Stunde, gyptiaca Helvetica 14 (Geneva, 1992), p. 551.
33 Idem, Das Buch von den Pforten des Jenseits,
gyptiaca Helvetica 7 (Geneva, 1979) (Text), scene
35, pp. 21314.
Apophis
205
This short stanza describes Apophis as an antisocial creature without any proper sensory
organs. Apophis is just noisy. In the litany of negative epithets (the names of Apophis which
shall not be, n rn n pp ntj nn wn=sn, in P. Bremner-Rhind 32,1332,42), Apophis is
called:
pp h hmhm.tj
Apophis, the fallen one, the Roarer (32,17).
A supercially similar but in reality very different phenomenon from Apophis is the language of Yahweh as described especially in Deut. 4:12 and 5:22. The people of Israel did
not hear distinct words but only the voice (5:22) or the voice of words (4:12). That
is why Moses acted as translator of the language of God, which was incomprehensible to
ordinary people.34 The language of the gods was transhuman in Egypt as well. It was the
mysterious language of the baboons.35 A physician of the late Old Kingdom held the
title j hmw.t st.t speaker of the secret art, which refers to a perhaps magical language
( j) in medicine (hmw.t st.t).36 In this context j means metaphorically either an abracadabra or possibly a genuine foreign language. In order to be efcacious, this language
had to transcend daily life, and so had to be in some sense non-Egyptian.
In summary, Apophis is conceived as a great babbler, a snakelike being living in the
water. One should recall the general context of Egypt in the ancient Near East (cf. Leviathan, Tannin, etc.), where the image of a snake-dragon that symbolizes water as well as re
was very common.37 Most probably the conception of Apophis was transferred from
popular religion into the culture of the elite during the PoR and remained signicant until
the very end of ancient Egyptian culture or even later. Perhaps Apophis lived on, only
slightly changed, as the dragon of the Middle Ages.38 Holding back water is one of the
most characteristic activities of dragons, and this notion is present in the very oldest
known occurrence of Apophis, namely, in the metaphorical expression sandbank of Apophis attested in the tomb of Ankhti at Moalla.