with the object of preventing storms, and dispersing rain-clouds, and removing any obstacle, animate or inanimate, which could prevent the rising of the sun in the morning, or obscure his light during the day. The Leader-in-chief of the hosts of darkness was a fiend called Āpep,
, who appeared in the sky in the form of a monster serpent, and, marshalling all the fiends of the Ṭuat, attempted to keep the Sun-god imprisoned in the kingdom of darkness. Right in the midst of the spells which were directed against Āpep we find inserted the legend of the Creation, which occurs in no other known Egyptian document (Col. XXVI., l. 20, to Col. XXIX., l. 6). Whether the scribe had two copies to work from, and simply inserted both, or whether he copied the short version and added to it as he went along, cannot be said. The legend is entitled:
Book of knowing the evolutions of Rā [and of]
overthrowing Āpep.
This curious "Book" describes the origin not only of heaven, and earth; and all therein, but also of God Himself. In it the name of Āpep is not even
