Rainbow serpents, dragons and dragon-slayers: Global traits,

ancient Egyptian particulars, and alchemical echoes

Lloyd D. Graham

Robert Blust has recently established that – globally – dragons evolved from rainbow serpents,
which in turn represent a prehistoric understanding of rainbows. The present paper, which is
richly illustrated, explores the “dragon-scape” of ancient Egypt in search of traits that may have
survived from these earlier stages. The cryptic pD.tyw Sw and Iaau of Coffin Text 698 might
betray a dim remembrance of the archaic Rainbow Taboo, which forbids one to point at a
rainbow. The beneficent snake-god of the Shipwrecked Sailor preserves a comprehensive set of
traits that hint at its origin in a rainbow-serpent-dragon; the same is true of the malevolent
chaos-serpent Apophis. Amongst many such features, both entities are able to withhold water
and both are vulnerable to thunderbolts. Many dragons can breathe/spit fire, and these may
either be malevolent or upholders of maat. Most malevolent dragons are male. Most Egyptian
dragons have snake-based bodies, which are often augmented by human legs/feet and/or avian
wings. The explicitly winged dragons seem typically to be protective, as do serpents with a
circular body configuration and/or a head at each end. Some of these, such as Mehen and his
associates, seem to anticipate by millennia the ouroboros and the Rebis of European alchemy,
a discipline whose magnum opus is crowned by a coincidentia oppositorum analogous to the
fusion of Re with Osiris during the sun-god’s nocturnal journey. Typologically, Narmer’s
serpopards, the therioanthropomorphic forms of Sobek, Renenutet and Taweret, and “the
devouress” Ammut all conform to the ancient Near Eastern dragon paradigm (i.e., a mammalian
body with reptilian embellishments) rather than the global default (of a reptilian body with
mammalian embellishments), but – of these – only the serpopards are likely to be true
Mesopotamian imports. Most female dragons are protective; Ammut is an exception, and may
be a conscious priestly confection. One can trace a conceptual path from Sobek’s rapacious
desire for women to the annual marriage/sacrifice of a maiden to the Nile-dragon that, in Coptic
legend, is vanquished by St. George. The saint’s act is a protective intervention that itself has
ancient antecedents in the spearing of Apophis by Seth, which in turn conforms to the archaic
pattern of a Thunderer felling a dragon by lightning-strike or thunderbolt.

Frontispiece 1

1. “Dragons evolved from rainbows”

Robert Blust, a professor of linguistics at the University of Hawaiʻi, spent almost 40 years
documenting beliefs about the rainbow in tribal societies around the world. His global
ethnological survey revealed that many independent cultures understood rainbows to be
autonomous supernatural entities – enormous spirit-snakes, to be precise. These findings
were published first as an Anthropos paper in 2000 and then more completely – and, sadly,
posthumously – as a monograph in 2023.2 In the Prologue to the latter, Blust writes:3
This book directly challenges what has been essentially a longstanding academic myth by
documenting beliefs about the rainbow in tribal societies around the planet that are very similar
in detail with the celebrated Rainbow Serpent myth of Australia. Far from supporting the claim

1
 that this belief complex is peculiar to one continent, the ethnographic record shows that it is a
culture universal that is more prominent in some areas and less so in others. A comprehensive
review of the evidence strongly suggests that the Rainbow Serpent myth has existed since the
origin of modern humans, and that its prominence in Australia is a product of cultural conserv-
atism, not of a unique development in situ, as has been maintained, explicitly or implicitly, for
generations.
The pan-Australian myth of the Rainbow Serpent regards the rainbow as a giant spirit-snake
which controls rainfall when in the sky and which inhabits lakes and waterholes when on the
ground – reservoirs of water that it guards zealously against inappropriate intrusion by
humans (Fig. 1).4 Because of its immense spiritual power, the Rainbow Serpent figures
prominently in male initiation rites.5 In addition, it is almost always inimical toward
adolescent girls and women, especially when they are menstruating.6

Blust’s documentation shows that, as in aboriginal Australia, the rainbow is viewed in

most parts of the traditional world as an animate being of menacing aspect that is both feared
and revered. Either way, it commands respect; for example, “the ‘Rainbow Taboo’ is a
globally distributed belief that one should not point at a rainbow with the extended index
finger, lest the finger become permanently bent, rot, be supernaturally severed, or just fall
off.”7 Despite some inevitable regional variation in how the rainbow is understood, he is
obliged to conclude that “The notion that it is an enormous snake that drinks water from the
earth and sprays it out to make the rain, or that drinks up the rain to make it stop is clearly
dominant, and without question is the idea that has the longest history in the cognitive
development of our species.” The biblical view of the rainbow as the symbol of a protective
covenant from a sole creator-god is a revisionist exercise unique to the Judeo-Christian
tradition, but the success of this model has almost completely banished its archaic precursor
from Western perception.8

Fig. 1. Sunrise over Uluru, Central Australia, with double rainbow, in 2007. The Anangu, who are the traditional
owners of the area, believe that the rock’s Mutitjulu waterhole is home to a wanampi, or rainbow serpent.9 A major
songline at the rock relates to kunia, the carpet python;10 this type of snake is really a rainbow serpent.11 Photo:
Author.

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 Many features attributed to the world’s rainbow-serpents – such as their snake-like body-
shape, control of rainfall, association with waterfalls, ability to fly, fear of thunder/lightning,
opposition to full sun, and paradoxical nature as a fusion of heat and cold or wet and dry –
derive directly from observations of the properties and behaviour of rainbows in nature, while
others – such as their supposed animosity towards women and ability to impregnate them, or
their ability to start fires – are less logical. Crucially, Blust goes on to show that many traits
that have been widely reported for rainbows, including the seemingly irrational ones, are also
reported for dragons. The simplest explanation for the numerous correspondences that Blust
highlights is that “what is unambiguously considered a dragon today must have been a
Rainbow Serpent, and hence a rainbow” at an earlier time (Fig. 2). In his own words:12
Once one begins to seriously investigate the ethnology of the rainbow the trail of facts leads
inexorably not just to the appearance of dragons, but to naturalistic explanations for some of
their most puzzling traits: why are they associated with waterfalls and caves in many parts of
the world? Why do they fly? Why do they breathe fire? Why do they guard treasures? Why do
they also guard springs? Why are they considered hermaphroditic in cultures that otherwise
have little in common, such as imperial China and aboriginal Australia? In short, a concentrated
attempt to understand the ethnology of the rainbow leads us, unsuspecting, into a rich and
detailed explanation for why the dragon idea is universal.

Fig. 2. Vasily Kandinsky (1935) Violet-orange, oil on canvas, detail (rotated 90° anticlockwise) which appears to
show a dragon intertwined with a rainbow coloured-ribbon (jointly forming the shape of the infinity symbol, ∞)
with a rainbow-shaped arch or bridge as backdrop.13 Both rainbows and dragons feature explicitly and repeatedly
in the artist’s earlier works.14 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Photo: Author (while on loan to Art Gallery of
New South Wales).

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 A far-reaching consequence of the rainbow’s contradictory nature as a fusion of fire (sun)
and water (rain) is that all dragons, and only dragons, are chimeras that combine the body
parts of warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals.15 Blust’s survey of dragons shows that:16
Despite local variations in details of body form or behavior, there is clearly a common thread
that runs through this population of fabulous beasts. All Eurasian dragons, the North American
horned water serpent, and the Mesoamerican plumed serpent share the property of combining
reptilian physical traits with those of mammals, birds, or both. Everywhere except in the ancient
Near East the basic body form is that of a reptile, with mammalian or avian embellishments; in
those limited examples we have from the Babylonian creation epic and early visual portrayals
from Mesopotamia, the basic body form is instead that of a mammal, with reptilian
embellishments. Huxley (1979:10) has perhaps put it best: “This combination of a hot-blooded
and a cold-blooded animal aptly sums up the dragon’s compound nature of fire and water.”
A good example of the “default template” is offered by the European concept of the dragon
(Fig. 3). A representative example of the Mesopotamian dragon is provided by the mušhuššu,
the “furious snake,”17 which appears repeatedly on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon (Fig. 4). In
Egypt, the serpopards – i.e. serpent-necked leopards or lions (Fig. 5) – on the predynastic
Narmer and Oxford palettes conform to the ancient Near Eastern pattern (namely, a
mammalian body with reptilian embellishments) and were probably inspired by

Fig. 3. The European notion of a dragon, as illustrated by Friedrich Bertuch’s Bilderbuch für Kinder (Weimar, ca.
1800). Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.18

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Fig. 4. The Mesopotamian mušhuššu-dragon, signature animal of the god Marduk, is depicted repeatedly on the
Ishtar Gate of his city, Babylon, which was built for Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604-562 BCE).19 Pergamon Museum,
Berlin. Photo: Author.

Fig. 5. Serpopards; detail from Narmer Palette, ca. 3200-3000 BCE; Egyptian Museum, Cairo, CG 14716. Public
Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.20

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Mesopotamian antecedents.21 In the Middle Kingdom tomb of Baqet III at Beni Hassan there
is a red-coloured snake-headed feline labelled as Sedja (sDA) (Fig. 6),22 whose origins and
function are obscure; it too conforms to the ancient Near Eastern paradigm.

The belief that rainbows fear and can be killed by thunderbolts and lightning-strikes
explains why dragon-slayers often use these weapons.23 This trait finds its most obvious
expression in the native American Thunderbird,24 but is in fact distributed globally.25

2. Aims and methodology

Since traces of the archaic rainbow-serpent/dragon paradigm survive even today in Western
culture, it seemed reasonable to suppose that such carry-over would be even more evident in
the mythology and religious beliefs of the great civilisations of antiquity.26 Accordingly, using
Blust’s work as its compass, this paper explores the “dragon landscape” of ancient Egypt and
attempts to assess the specifics of this one civilization against globally distributed features of
the rainbow-serpent-dragon nexus, including the concept of the dragon-slayer. Blust’s
compilation of traits that are widely shared by the rainbow and the dragon provides the
categories listed in column 1 of Table 1 (which has been placed at the end of this section),
and the geographic distributions that he nominates for these traits serve as the basis for the
content of column 3. Column 2 identifies dragon-like entities from Egyptian religious and
secular literature that appear to possess the relevant trait. In order to minimise disruption to
the main text, the Table will not be called explicitly every time that a feature/entity
combination under discussion is included in the Table.

Fig. 6. Procession of three mythological animals (with captions high above) in the Middle Kingdom tomb of Baqet
III at Beni Hassan: a snake-headed feline, sDA (left), a griffin, sfr (middle) and the Seth-animal, SA (right). Photo:
Author.

6
 Before proceeding, some words of caution are called for. There is a surprising dearth of
evidence from ancient Egypt on the topic of rainbows, and such data as do exist are highly
ambiguous. As a starting point, it proved expedient to accept as correct the arguments of the
very few peer-reviewed papers that address the subject directly. If, on the other hand, one
adopted a contrary position and decided to interpret the lack of primary data as an indication
that rainbows were deliberately ignored in ancient Egypt because – like eclipses – they were
aberrations that fell outside the world of regularity and order, then the content of the next two
sections (if not more) would change substantially. Even with the chosen “conformist” path, it
was sometimes necessary to resort to speculation – interpolation, extrapolation and informed
guesswork – to connect the dots and move the argument forward. Unfortunately, Egyptian
books of the afterlife – whose content is essential to the exercise – are notoriously lacunose
where explanations are most needed. Conversely, when they do provide detail, these too often
are opaque and open to radically different interpretations. In consequence, a different
researcher could easily arrive at a significantly different synthesis to the one that follows,
especially in the next two sections. It would be best to regard any of the segments dealing
directly with the ancient Egyptian reception of rainbows (Sections 3, 4 and parts of 5, 10 and
12) as no more than a tentative initial exploration and somewhat subjective foray into an area
where – quite rightly – angels would fear to tread.

The “beauty and the beast” dynamic afforded by the rainbow–dragon continuum lends
itself naturally to illustration, so the paper has deliberately been made rich in images – over
100 figures, almost all in full colour and at high resolution. At worst, the resulting photoessay
should afford a visually impressive ramble through a dragon- and slayer-infested ancient
Egyptian bestiary, augmented by images of comparanda from other cultures and by parallels
drawn from the iconography of European alchemy, that other great repository of dragon-like
creatures. The latter juxtaposition may at first seem capricious and unjustified, but the
underlying continuity between ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs and European alchemy has
long been recognised. The relationship is expressed succinctly by Jungian psychologist
Andreas Schweitzer, who observed that “What the ancient Egyptian projected into the sacred
region of the netherworld, the medieval alchemist saw in the mysterious events taking place
in his Hermetic vessel (vas Hermetis) or furnace.”27 Indeed, as he later explains:28
The thoughts of a seventeenth-century alchemist are so strikingly similar to the Egyptian visions
of the transformation in the depths of the netherworld that an influence of the one on the other
can scarcely be denied; […] Thus we may say that the religious ideas of Egypt, particularly
those of the New Kingdom, with their emphasis on the netherworld, strongly influenced not
only Christianity but even more so, alchemy. […]
It is scarcely imaginable that such thoughts could have existed without knowledge of texts
expressing Egyptian religious concepts. It seems that via the Corpus Hermeticum, there was a
deep relationship between the basic concepts of alchemy and those we find in the Egyptian
Books of the Netherworld, and it is mainly through alchemy that the wisdom of ancient Egypt
has been transmitted to us.
Accordingly, among the dragon- and snake-containing alchemical emblems we will
encounter not just visual parallels of ancient Egyptian motifs but – in some cases – their
actual descendants.

7
Table 1. Rainbow-serpent-dragon traits in ancient Egypt and worldwide
Trait
Gives rain
Withholds rain
Is associated with a water-body
Can fly – winged
Can fly – celestially active
Has serpentine shape
Has scales
Has horns
Has hair
Has 2 or 4 legs
[ ] = therioanthropomorphic form
Is opposed to/by thunder,
lightning or meteor-strike
Is opposed to/by the sun
Carnivorous bird repels dragon
danger
Is colourful or red51
Esp. dangerous to young women
Has loud roar
Can speak
Can breathe fire
Has fetid breath or sprays venom
Its movement causes earthquakes
Presages war
Lives in a cave
Guards treasure
Has jewel(s) as part of its head
Has two heads, one at each end
Is encircling or ouroboros-like
Causes category reversal
Is dual-gendered
Egyptian
(Ap), (ShS)
Ap, (MGB)30
Ap, Sobek, MGB, HP, ShS,
Hayshesh, Hiririet
Sebty, Wdj, Bsk, Msgr, Nbk,
Seshemyt, BWS, GGs, NSD33
Ap, Rerek,35 Kbwt, Nbk, Iaau,
NSD
All but Ammut, Sobek, Twrt,
BWS, Sedja
All but Ammut, BWS
Ap,40 Rerek,41 (Hayshesh)
Ammut, ShS
Ammut, [Sobek], [Rnnt], Twrt,
Nbk,44 Sa-Ta, Bsk, Sedja,
NSD45
Ap, ShS
Ap
Horus, Nekhbet, (winged Seth)
Hnpt-2?, ShS, Hayshesh, Nbk,
Bsk,52 BWS, Sesehemyt, Sedja,
GGs, NSD
Sobek, MGB
56
Ap, Hemhemty/Sebty
ShS, Wdj?59
Rerek,61 HBM, FO, ShS, Wdj,
Rnnt, Neith, 3SS, NSD, CP
Ap63
Ap,65 ShS
(Neith)
Ap68
HP, Wdj, Rnnt, Heneb, Nbk,
Hayshesh, (ShS), GG1
ShS
Rīr-Rīr, Hekenet, Mehen, NSD
Ap, Mehen, Ankh-Netjeru73
Ankh-Netjeru, Mehen, Iaau?
Hekenet, (Neith)
8
Elsewhere
IND, EAS, NAM, MES [major]29
ANE, EUR, EAS, MES [minor]31
AFR, EUR, ANE, IND, EAS,
NAM, MES, AUS 32
EUR, ANE, IND 34
EAS, MES 36
ANE,37 IND, EAS, NAM, MES 38
EUR, ANE, IND, EAS, NAM,
MES 39
EUR, ANE, IND, EAS, NAM 42
EUR, ANE, EAS, NAM 43
EUR, ANE, EAS 46
AFR, EUR, ANE, IND, EAS,
NAM, MES 47 = All48
EAS49
EUR, IND, NAM, EAS 50
EUR, EAS, MES, NAM 53
AFR,54 EUR, EAS, NAM 55
EUR, MES,57 AUS58
EUR, IND 60
EUR, IND, EAS 62
EUR, EAS, NAM 64
AFR, EUR, EAS, MES, NAM 66
EUR, IND, EAS, NAM, MES 67
EUR, ANE, EAS, MES, NAM 69
EUR, IND, EAS 70
EUR, IND, MES, NAM 71
EAS, NAM 72
EUR, ANE 74
EUR, IND, MES, EAS 75
AFR, EUR, EAS, MES, NAM,
AUS 76
Keys and notes to Table 1:
In the contexts relevant to this paper,77 entities have been judged as follows: negative = malevolent/punishing
(in red, shown first in column 2 lists); positive = helpful/protective (in green, shown second in lists); black
= mixture, ambivalent or uncertain (shown last in lists). Underlined = female, otherwise male. Pink fill =
warm-blooded trait; blue fill = cold-blooded trait. If an Egyptian entity’s trait is not discussed in the main
text or requires additional support, then a reference superscript is provided in the Table.
Of the negative entities in the Table, the malevolent ones are Ap, Hemhemty/Sebty, Rerek, Hnpt-2 and MGB;
the others are punitive, but act to uphold maat. Of the positive entities, the main helpful ones are ShS, Kbwt,
Seshemyt and to some extent Rnnt and Ankh-Netjeru; the others tend to be protective.
Column 2 abbreviations: 3SS = Three fire-Spitting Snakes in the 6th Hour of the Amduat (see ahead to Fig.
17); Ap = Apep/Apophis (Section 5); Bsk = snake-deity II, “the Basilisk,” from the tomb of Iufaa at Abusir
(see ahead to Fig. 94); BWS = bird-winged scarabs, or scarabs with mammalian attributes (such as a ram’s
head) (Section 11); CP = Cobra of the Pit (Section 9); FO = The Fiery One (see ahead to Fig. 58); HBM =
He Who Burns Millions (Section 9); GGs = the Great Gods (Section 11), comprising GG1 = GG who spreads
his wings with multicolour plumes, GG2 = GG who lives from the breath of his two wings;” Hnpt-2 =
Henepet-2, the malevolent one of two female snakes with same name from the temple of Edfu (Section 9);
HP = “Snorting serpent” from the Hymn of the Pearl (Section 5); Kbwt = Kebehwet (Section 5); MGB =
Mari Girgis’s Beast = St. George’s Nile-dragon (Section 12); Msgr = Meretseger (Section 11); Nbk =
Nehebukau (Sections 4 & 11); NSD = Netherworld Snake-Deities/Demons (in addition to any listed specific-
ally); Rnnt = Renenutet (Sections 9 & 11); Sa-Ta = sA tA, “son of the earth” (Section 11); ShS = snake-deity
in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (Section 8); Twrt = Taweret (Section 13).

Column 3 abbreviations: AFR = Africa; ANE = Ancient Near East; AUS = Australia; EAS = East Asia; EUR
= Europe; IND = India and/or Pakistan; MES= Mesoamerica; NAM = North America.

9
3. Rainbows in ancient Egypt

Despite the well-known aridity of southern Egypt, the potential presence of desert rain-magic
rituals in the Pyramid Texts78 and the unambiguous content of the New Kingdom’s “Tempest
Stela”79 attest to the fact that it could rain in parts of ancient Egypt, and that it sometimes did
so with violence.80 The Opet temple at Karnak praises the West Wind as “that which brings
about the pouring down of the Nile flood of the sky,” the last phrase being an Egyptian
circumlocution for “rain.”81 Indeed, “The rain was sometimes called ‘Hapy,’ or ‘water which
comes from the sky’ or ‘Hapy of the sky.’”82

Under favourable atmospheric conditions, the cessation of rain would have been
accompanied by a rainbow. Given that rain would be more likely in the north, it is interesting
to note that the lunette or gable of the pr nw shrine – the canonical shrine of Lower Egypt,
which represents an archaic shelter of high status – is often decorated with nested arcs of
different colours to create a rainbow-like pattern (Fig. 7). The pr nw and its Upper Egyptian
counterpart, the pr wr, are believed to have served as the prototypes of temples, sacred
barques, barque stations, coronation chambers and palaces.83 Some items of personal
adornment, such as royal broad-collars, also seem to recapitulate the form of the rainbow
(Fig. 8), and Egyptian religious iconography does sometimes connect such collars with the
sun and the sky (Fig. 9).

In the Egyptian language, the extension of meaning for the words denoting an archery bow
(first pD.t, and later Smr.t) to include the rainbow parallels the corresponding semantic

Fig. 7. Nested arcs of different colours adorning the lunette/gable spaces under the roofs of pr nw shrines to create
rainbow-like decoration, as painted in the 18th-Dynasty tomb of Menna (TT 69). Photo: Author.

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Fig. 8. Middle Kingdom wesekh-collar of the princess Sithathormerit, made from rows of carnelian,
lapis lazuli, feldspar, and gold beads; Egyptian Museum, Cairo, cat. TR1.11.36 & SR 1/6372. Photo:
Author (while on loan to Australian Museum, Sydney).

Fig. 9. Hathor relief from Crypt South 1 at Dendera (1st century BCE),84 with the solar barque
position-ed at the right-hand terminal of the broad-collar, from which emerge four Hathor naos-sistra
(probably representing the four cardinal directions, to be understood here as the four pillars of the
sky). Photo: Author.

11
development in Hebrew; in both cultures, the basic meaning of the words has always been the
military weapon.85 Justification for the extended meaning lies in the similarly curved shape of
the fully-drawn archer’s bow and the rainbow, an identification common to many cultures.86

One might wonder, therefore, if the cryptic pD.tyw Sw to whom Coffin Text 698 is
addressed might not betray some dim remembrance of the archaic Rainbow Taboo, which
forbids one to point at a rainbow (Section 1).87 The Egyptian term, which clearly denotes a
class of malign supernatural entities, translates literally as “those belonging to the bow of
Shu,”88 Shu being the god of sunlight as well as of air. The spell begins: “O pD.tyw Sw, who
seals the mouth of the one who points his finger against that which he sees…” (CT VI: 332b-
c).89 It is unclear why the entity takes its revenge on the perpetrator’s mouth, since it is
usually the offending finger that is targeted in the Rainbow Taboo. Nevertheless, many
versions of the injunction do require the impertinent finger to be thrust immediately into the
pointer’s mouth in order to save it from loss or disease,90 which necessarily would stop their
speech. The following line (332d) does refer to a finger being fractured, but this body-part
belongs to the malign entity, whose eye is likewise destroyed by the curse of his would-be
victim. However, since both of the targeted organs are precisely those parts of the human that
initiated the confrontation – the eye for seeing, and the finger for pointing – one might well
suspect that these injuries were originally the prerogative of the supernatural agent, which
now have been turned back and inflicted upon their issuer. The spell then attributes several
perverse features to the supernatural entity, who is addressed as “Iaau:” its tongue and phallus
are swapped, and it drinks urine (CT VI: 332g-i).91 Although these attributes are not
otherwise associated with rainbows, in some parts of the world rainbows are considered to be
agents of category reversal (Section 9), and this hostile entity “is the epitome of reversals.”92
In Egyptian terms, such perversion is a personification of bw.t, “evil” or “abomination.”93

More information about this mysterious Iaau can be gleaned from other texts.94 In CT 148
and 149, Iaau seems to be a malicious primordial bird (CT II: 223e & 238b),95 while in CT
162 and 163 (CT II: 395b-396a & 405h) he is an evil entity that pre-dates the Creation.96 In
cosmogonic terms he is the parent of the West Wind97 – the wind that we noted above as
bringing rain98 – whose animal emblem was a snake.99 In the Old Kingdom, however, Iaau
appears in PT 249 (§264a), where he is interpreted:100
as being two fighters, but also as being a pair of celestial gate-wardens or the two gates of the
sky […] It is clear that Iaau appears within a celestial setting and can be associated with wind
and air. And the determinative of the writing of Iaau in PT 249 §264a seems to be a pair of fans
or sunshades (Gardiner signs S35-36) […] Thus Herman Kees thinks that Iaau is a sky godhead
(“Himmelsgottheit”), while Penelope Wilson states: “originally iAA may have been some kind
of air or wind genie who was later envisaged in the form of a bird, and who had control over
the air.”
The “fans or sunshades” in question are both semicircular, and thus rainbow-shaped, although
they are each placed atop a long handle. In CT 170, Iaau seems to be the celestial ferryman
(CT III: 36c),101 a neutral agent, while in CT 341 “the fair Iaa(u)” is a positive entity who
announces the arrival of the deceased to the solar barque (CT IV: 344g).102 Frandsen attempts
to reconcile Iaau’s moral contradictions as follows:103
Iaau represents the world reversed, which is a manifestation of “evil”. [… However,] Iaau
became two, embodying latent, creative existence as well as non-existence. […] As an embodi-
ment of latent existence, he may even have been a forerunner of Osiris (Spell 341, 1089). This
ambiguity made it possible for the dead in certain circumstances to avail himself of some of the
characteristics of Iaau (Spell 149, 953).

12
In sum, Iaau – like a rainbow-serpent-dragon104 – may be considered either hostile or
beneficent; moreover, he has sky-, air- and sun-related characteristics and a bridging function
that could align with an origin in the rainbow. However, he also has other characteristics that
are less well aligned with the rainbow hypothesis: his name can be written with a plant
determinative (Gardiner sign M2), suggesting a link with vegetation,105 and – despite his
paternity of the snake-related West Wind – his animal form is a bird. Overall, the possibility
of a rainbow connection for CT 698 and for Iaau remains attractive but is far from certain.
Iaau will make a brief reappearance in Section 10.

Returning our attention to the Egyptian word for bow, an early instance of the use of pD.t
to denote a rainbow occurs in Pyramid Text 570,106 which begins:107
PT 570 (§1443a-b): Words spoken: The face of the sky is washed, the bow shines. A god is
given birth by the sky on the arms of Shu and Tefnut, on the two arms of king N.108 “The Great
One rises” is what the gods say.
Although other translators have treated pD.t as a synonym of dawn or the sky – Sethe opts for
“sunrise,”109 Faulkner “celestial expanse,”110 and Allen “the arc of the sky”111 – the reference
to the sky being washed highlights the importance of rain,112 and the joint mention of Shu
(the god of sunlight and air) and Tefnut (the goddess of moisture) invokes the real-world
prerequisites for a rainbow. Here, the rainbow may even be treated as “a god given birth by
the sky,”113 since this nTr is distinct from the king and appears upon the latter’s arms (as it
would do if, say, the king were climbing up the rainbow like a ladder).114 Immediately after
this, the rainbow seems to be hailed as a Great One (wrr, masculine)115 to which the king
later likens himself through repeats of “This king N is a great one [wr], son of a great one
[wr].”116 Given the ancient Egyptian fascination with “shine” and “sparkle,”117 the culture’s
valorisation of solar phenomena in general, and the exquisite appreciation of colour in its art,
it should come as no surprise to find the rainbow being regarded positively and interpreted as
a manifestation of the divine.

From the Old Kingdom onward, the rainbow may have had an Egyptian hieroglyph that
depicted it directly. Despite conventional interpretation of Gardiner sign N28 as “a hill over
which are the rays of the rising sun,”118 it is possible that the glyph – which has the phonetic
value of xa – was originally a stylised depiction of a single or double rainbow.119 The sign is
made up of a series of concentric arcs of variable number, ranging from three to seven but
usually five; the ensemble is crowned by a crest of perpendicular rays (Fig. 10).120 In his
history of Egyptian writing, Francis Griffith described the glyph as “A semicircular figure
formed of half a disk and four concentric bands of different colours – blue, green, and red. A
fifth and cresting band, sometimes marked with radiating lines, does not extend to the
diameter.”121 In some painted examples, such as the one chosen for illustration by Griffith, the
colors (in order, starting from the bottom) are blue, green, red, green, and blue, while the
crest is green with small blue lines (Fig. 10, bottom left); this is the exact sequence expected
for a double rainbow, albeit without showing the gap between the major and minor bow.122
The glyph is used logographically in the Pyramid Texts, where the expression xa n(.y) tA,
“Appearance-of-Land,” seems to indicate that the rainbow was understood as a latter-day
reprise of the primeval mound of creation:123
PT 333 (§542a-c): King N has cleansed (himself) on this Appearance-of-Land, on which Re
cleansed (himself); he sets up the rungs and erects the ladder,124 while those who are in the
Great One grasp the hand of king N.
Here the image of the sun being cleansed by rain provides the necessary ingredients for a
rainbow. It is interesting that once again we see the term “Great One” in close connection

13
 Fig. 10. Gardiner sign N28. Left: Middle Kingdom examples excised digitally from photographs of
cloisonné pectorals belonging to the princesses Sithathor (top) and Sithathoriunet (middle), both
probably daughters of Senwosret II;125 Egyptian Museum, Cairo, CG 52001 & Metropolitan Museum
of Art (New York), 16.1.3a,b. Below them, Griffith’s drawing of Gardiner sign N28 from Hatshepsut’s
temple at Deir el-Bahri (bottom).126 Right: Examples from Ramesside royal tombs; top to bottom:
Rameses I (KV 16), Nefertari (QV 66), Rameses IV (KV 2) and Rameses IX (KV 6). Photos: Author,
except for Metropolitan Museum (middle left).127

with a rainbow, although in this case it is feminine (wr.t). Sethe translates im.yw wr.t as
“those who are in the sky,” while Faulkner and Allen prefer “those who are in the West.”128
Sethe’s choice appears to be the better, given the statements in another Pyramid Text spell
that uses the expression xa n(.y) tA:129
PT 484 (§1022a-c): This king N is the Appearance-of-Land in the middle of the Great Green [=
Ocean], whose arm those who belong to the earth do not take. Those who belong to the earth
do not take the arm of this king N when (those who) belong to the sky are the ones who take his
arm – not the earth or those who belong to the earth.

Taken together, these extracts from the Pyramid Texts suggest that the sky, the sun and the
king are all purified via the rainfall that precedes or accompanies the rainbow. The celestial

14
spectrum seems to be variously regarded as a god, a masculine or feminine Great One to
which the king can be likened, and an epiphany of the primeval mound, resting on the earth
and rising into the sky. In practical terms, it is a stairway to heaven: “a mound on which the
king can place a ladder and ascend to heaven, the rungs of the ladder perhaps being as many
rainbows as he climbs, passing from colour to colour.”130 One must wonder if many of the
other sky-ladders mentioned in the Pyramid and Coffin Texts might not also be of this kind,
and especially whether the “bones of Shu” by which the king is urged to ascend to Nut in PT
222 (and the analogous “Supports-of-Shu” in CT 76)131 might not be clouds or mist, as
conventionally thought,132 but rather the god’s multicoloured ribs writ large across the sky in
the form of a single or double rainbow.

Non-logographic use of hieroglyph N28 provides the Egyptian language with the
frequently-used verb xai, meaning “to rise” (of sun), “to appear in glory” (of god or crown or
king, especially of the king’s accession), or “to be shining” (of king).133 The semantic range
of xai, and the grounding of its sense of awe and reverence in the portent of the rainbow, is
captured eloquently by Nathalie Beaux:134
For the Egyptians, rain is a scourge. The appearance of the sun, at the end or during the rain, is
“celebrated” by that of a rainbow, which marks or announces the end of the scourge. It marks
it in a grandiose way, both by its colors and by its size. It therefore becomes a symbol of the
Appearance […] The double rainbow is the Appearance par excellence. This one is unforget-
table, grandiose and rare to the point that it can seem unique. This was the case for every king
with his coronation, an essential, central event in his life and the life of the entire country. By
the alliance of the double rainbow that represents the sign [N28] with the semantic content of
“appearance” of the word xa, the lexical register xaj, “to appear (in combat)”, “to be crowned”
as well as xaw “appearance, coronation, crown” takes on another dimension. Through the
metaphor of the double rainbow, the royal appearance during his coronation, like that which the
king made in battle, mythically depicted the Moment when everything comes together, the
victory of the sun over the rain and of life over death, a very real, very tangible victory, xa n tA,
the “Appearance of Land”, as in this very first distant mythical time when life arose from a
mound that had just emerged...

The Egyptians possessed “enormous flexibility in allowing non-harmonized parallel

truths,”135 and their inclusive “both/and” thinking allowed them to view seemingly discordant
narratives as complementary rather than competing. Given such cognitive pluralism, an
understanding of Gardiner sign N28 as a rainbow which signifies the primeval mound would
in no way preclude a parallel understanding of the same glyph as “a hill over which are the
rays of the rising sun,”136 which is the mainstream Egyptological interpretation of the symbol.
Each dawn is in fact accompanied by “a phenomenon of refraction of light which causes the
eye to first perceive blue-green, then red at sunrise”137 – in effect, a rainbow manifested
rapidly through time rather than simultaneously across space. Perhaps this is why, in the 5th
Hour of the Amduat, the burial mound of Osiris – a centrally positioned chest in which the
sun-god is regenerated overnight, and from the base of which Khepri is shown emerging – is
depicted in the tombs of Rameses III and VI as a nested series of rainbow-like but pastel-
toned blue-green and red arcs (Fig. 11).138 In terms of dawn, the arcs of hieroglyph N28
would depict the “halo of the sun, shortly before it appears above the horizon and whose
different colorings result from the diffraction of light in the atmosphere. […] The upper part,
fan-shaped, renders in a stylized way the rays diffusing above the halo.” This interpretation of
the glyph is largely compatible with that of Beaux because each rebirth of the sungod was, to
the Egyptian mind, another “Appearance par excellence.” Moreover, in the first sunrise of the
sp tp.y – the event re-enacted by every subsequent sunrise – the hill in question would be
none other than the primeval mound of creation.

15
Fig. 11. Detail from the centre of the upper register of the 5th Hour of the Amduat, as depicted in the tomb of
Rameses VI (KV 9). The “chest of Khepri,” which represents the burial mound of Osiris, “is called ‘Darkness’
because at the same time it is another image of the whole Netherworld in which the sungod and Osiris are
regenerated during the night, reappearing as a scarab in the morning.”139 The scarab Khepri is shown emerging
from the bottom of the nested rainbow-like arcs,140 crawling in the middle register toward the head of Isis which
emerges from the top of a mound that contains, in the bottom register, the cavern of Sokar (not shown).141 The
birds on either side of the burial mound represent Isis (left) and Nephthys (right).142 Inset: The “chest of Khepri”
in the tomb of Rameses III (KV 11). Photo: Author.

16
 It is likely that there are other rainbow-inspired texts in the Egyptian religious corpus that
have not yet been recognised as such. For example, a wooden statue of a dignitary from the
late 18th Dynasty preserves a description of Amun-Re which, at face value, reads very much
as if it was inspired by a rainbow, even though glyph N28 is not used in the text. In the
inscription’s offering formula, the sun-god is identified with “the beautiful colours [iwn.w
nfr(.w)] which came into being by itself, the great god, lord of the sky, who created the sky,
earth and water on the mountains.”143 The plural noun iwn.w could also mean “natures” or
“dispositions,”144 so a physical or materialistic reading might not be appropriate for this
cosmogonic text, but its combination of elements is rather suggestive of a rainbow at a
waterfall. If this was indeed the inspiration, it reinforces the idea that rainbows – however
and wherever they were produced in dynastic Egypt – were viewed positively and associated
with the sun-god and the pristine creation epoch.

Beyond the rapid prismatic sequence on the horizon at sunrise, the ancient Egyptians also
had a more expansive time-based conception of colours as emblematic of the solar circuit. As
Alison Roberts explains:145
the ancient Egyptians themselves had contemplated the solar cycle’s world of heavenly colour,
the intimate relationship between gleaming colours and transforming solar life. The word for
“dawn” in Egyptian is hedj-ta, meaning “whitening of the land”, and representing this dawn
region in the Book of Nut is the Upper Egyptian crown goddess Nekhbet, […] the guardian of
the “White Crown”, the Hedjet, or “White One”. This dawn “whitening” is also associated with
“silver” and “purification”. […]
From the dawning of divine light until the close of the day, the Egyptian sun god journeys
through a shimmering play of astral colours, travelling in the Book of Day between green, gold
and red. Thus, as day dawns in the first hour, travellers in the sun boat follow “the way of the
green bird”, in the ninth hour Osiris gloriously manifests his golden divinized nature in the
Field of Reeds, and then, as the sun boat turns towards the North, the realm of the Red Crown,
a deity appears called “He who makes Redness”. In this reddening tenth hour, Re manifests as
“Gold of the Stars”, completely encircled by the uraeus’s fiery flames, his divine golden essence
ringed in serpent redness, radiating that red-gold colour so prized by New Kingdom Egyptians.
Already in the Pyramid Texts [PT 352 (§569a-b); 504 (§1082)] the celestial mother goddess
displays green and red in her perpetual cycle of nocturnal conception, pregnancy, morning birth
and regeneration. These colours also pervade incantations to the beautiful but dangerous serpent
Eye goddess, whose oscillating nature manifests in “abundant colours” as she becomes now the
“Green One”, now the “White One,” now “Red”. Colour combinations of “black, green and
white” or “white and red” or “green, white and red” stream through these incantations,
juxtaposed with the sun (red) and the moon (white).

To this we might add that nocturnal cosmic mystery accomplished in the New Kingdom
Netherworld books first involves putrefaction of the supine corpse of Osiris,146 associated
with blackness; rescued and restored by mummification, the resurrected Osiris stands upright
“tightly wrapped in bright white raiment [… H]his hands and face – the only visible parts of
his body – are often green, demonstrating his ‘greening,’ the fresh and prosperous state of
having overcome death” (Fig. 12).147 Combining this with Roberts’ description suggests that
a complete diurnal cycle might be considered to comprise the following night-to-sunset
sequence: black – [dawn spectrum]148 – white – green – yellow – red.149
The ancient Egyptian diurnal colour sequence seems to have been remembered and valued
by early alchemists, starting with ones operative in Egypt,150 who understood the series in
terms of the states through which the base material or prima materia must pass in

17
 Fig. 12. Osiris with green skin and white wrappings, from the tomb of Seti I (KV 17). Note
the rainbow-like colour banding in the feathers of the atef crown and in the broad collar.
Photo: kairoinfo4u, via Flickr.151

order to be purified and transformed in course of the magnum opus (“Great Work”).152 The
standard alchemical progression consists first of nigredo (blackening, again associated with
putrefaction), then an optional cauda pavonis (“peacock’s tail,” a rainbow-like iridescence;
Fig. 13),153 next albedo (whitening), next citrinitas (yellowing) and finally rubedo
(reddening) (Fig. 14).154 To quote Roberts once again:155
Hence, though the colours are much more standardized in later alchemy, Olympiodorus [of the
6th century CE] was not arbitrarily imposing colour onto the ancient solar cycle, since the
Egyptians themselves perceived shimmering colours welling up in solar light. What is
astonishing, though, is that a Greek alchemist should still be deeply concerned with the
Egyptian solar cycle in late antiquity, ascribing particular colours to each phase and
characterizing it as “the accomplishment of the entire day”.

18
Fig. 13. “Peacock’s tail” phases occur in a variety of alchemical operations and are sometimes shown explicitly
as a “chemical rainbow,”156 as in this illustration from Thesaurus thesaurorum, ca. 1725, Wellcome Collection
MS.4775, p.34. The practical alchemical processes in the lower register of the drawing are represented
emblematically in the upper register. At left is the extraction of sulphur (winged yellow dragon) with the volatile
spirit of Mercury (grey bird) to give different coloured sublimates (rainbow, citing Gen 9:12-17);157 at right is the
distillation of “confused chaos” (fire-breathing red serpent) from a dark-coloured terra damnata into the receiver,
a process likened at top right to an angel vanquishing “the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and
Satan” (Rev 20:1-3).158 Public Domain, via Wellcome Collection.159

19
Fig. 14. Illustration of the Second Treatise of Splendor Solis, a German alchemical manuscript, 1582. The colour
sequence of the magnum opus appears on the knight’s breastplate, with the optional “peacock’s tail” alluded to at
top right in the ornamental surround. British Library, Harley 3469, f.7. Photo: British Library, via Wikimedia
Commons.160

To close the conceptual loop, we should note that some later alchemical works – such as the
17th-century Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy, ascribed to Edward Kelly – use images of
actual rainbows to encode their authors’ understanding of the organisation of the world and to
represent the colour transformations that occurred in their work (Fig. 15).
Before leaving the laboratory, it may also be worth mentioning that there is a practical
parallel between mummification – the process of drawing off a corpse’s foul decomposition
liquids and replacing them with preservative balms and essential oils – and a key principle of
alchemy, which the 16th-century Splendor Solis expresses as: “Deprive the thing of its
Destructive Moisture, and renew it with its own Essential one which will become its
perfection and life.”161 It was by such desiccation and embalming that Osiris was restored to
vitality as lord of the Netherworld, thereby becoming the paradigmatic mummy. Jungian

20
 Fig. 15. Woodcuts showing rainbows in the first and last emblem of the 17th-century Theatre of Terrestrial
Astronomy, ascribed to Edward Kelly. Left: first emblem, “the Sphere of Heaven. The said sphere consists
of a circle, which circle represents the Trinity of the Deity in unity, God with three heads and one crown,
surmounted by a triangle, encircled with a rainbow, and above the sun and moon.”162 Right: Sixteenth (and
last) emblem, reprising the colour changes in the alchemical Great Work. Both emblems have been coloured
digitally in accordance with the Latin colour-markings and (as far as practicable) with the additional
colouring instructions in A.E. Waite’s 1893 print publication of the manuscript.163

psychologists have also recognised mummification as an alchemical process; as Thom

Cavalli puts it, “It is relatively easy to see many of the key principles of alchemy at work in
mummification: facilitating natural processes, physical and ritual operations, transmuting a
lesser body into a higher, immortal form. […] The dismemberment of Osiris, followed by the
reassembly of his body by his wife, Isis, describes the seminal alchemical recipe, solve et
coagula.”164 Although best known from the late account (1st-2nd century CE) in Plutarch’s De
Iside et Osiride, belief in the dismemberment and reassembly of Osiris’s body-parts dates
back to the Old Kingdom.165 As with the alchemical magnum opus, the process culminates in
a mysterium coniunctionis – a mysterious union of opposites – which here consists of the
Osiris’s posthumous copulation with Isis;166 this miraculous conjunction of dead god and
living goddess grants Osiris a son and heir,167 whose destiny is to rule the people of Egypt. In
Section 9 we will encounter Osiris’s recurring participation in another coniunctio
oppositorum which is both alchemical and cosmic.

To conclude the alchemical excursus on death and resurrection, we might note that the
dismemberment of Osiris has a visual counterpart in the 10th Emblem of the Splendor Solis
(Fig. 16); colour-wise, the emblem also happens to have a dawn colour spectrum in its sky
and a murderer conspicuously attired in Sethian red.168 This emblem parallels the Egyptian
belief that the corpse of the sun-god and the decapitated and dismembered body of Osiris are
one and the same (Fig. 17). For example, the Book of Caverns starts with the sun-disk being
separated from the sun-god (decapitation); the book’s Netherworld journey represents the

21
Fig. 16. Decapitation and dismemberment of the king.169 Emblem 10 from the 16th-century Splendor Solis
(Third Treatise, 6th Parable).170 The accompanying text describes “a man whose body was dead and yet
beautiful and white like Salt. The Head had a fine Golden appearance, but was cut off the trunk, and so
were all the limbs [… In the murderer’s] left hand was a paper on which the following was written: ‘I have
killed thee, that thou mayest receive a superabundant life, but thy head I will carefully hide…”171 © British
Library Board, Harley 3469 f. 20v, reproduced with permission.172

22
Fig. 17. Three guardian serpents (rearing vertically) spit a red stream of fire into the three chests that contain the
three-fold burial of the sun-god, each of which also contains a sun-disk and a knife.173 The dismemberment shown
here alludes to that of Osiris;174 cf. Fig. 16. Right-to-left: “He Whose Eye Spits Fire” (vertical caption)
heating/guarding the Tomb Which Seth Adores (horizontal caption),175 containing the hind-part of a lion; “He
Whose Tongue Spits Fire,” heating/guarding the Tomb of the Towing of Kheraha (the “battleground,” site of the
struggle between Horus and Seth), containing the wing of a scarab; and “He With High Flame,” heating/ guarding
the Tomb That Unites Horus, containing a human head.176 Scene from the 6th Hour of the Amduat, tomb of Ramses
VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

restoration of Re’s sun-disk/head and his bodily reassembly as imn rn=f, “He whose name is
hidden.”177 Returning to the Splendor Solis, the Parable for the 11th Emblem explains that “an
ancient Sage who desired to rejuvenate himself was told: he should allow himself to be cut to
pieces and decoct [distilled] to a perfect decoction [essence], and then his limbs would
reunite and again be renewed in plenty of strength.”178 This metaphysical cookery is
reminiscent of that shown in Fig. 17 and in the 4th Register of Division 1 in the Book of
Caverns, which shows paired figures tending beehive-shaped vessels that contain flesh, a
divine beard and a lock of hair – a mixture of body-parts from Re and Osiris.179 The lowest
register of Division 5 of Caverns reformulates this theme in a destructive mode, anticipating
for us the fiery dragon-breath to come (Section 9) by showing uraei or snake-headed
anthropomorphs heating “cannibal hot-pots” of body-parts harvested from the condemned
dead (Fig. 18). Lastly, we might note that the rebirth symbolised by the germinating “corn
Osiris” of Khoiak (Fig. 19)180 has a visual counterpart in the 8th Key of the 17th-century
Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine (Fig. 20).181 Nowadays, the children of Abydos perpetuate the
Osirian fertility tradition by selling plaited corn figurines known as arūset el-ḳamḥ to tourists
as good-luck charms (Fig. 21).182

4. Rainbow-serpent-dragons in ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt had only one river and that river did not have any significant waterfalls, so
there were presumably no large dragon-infested cascade-and-cave systems in Egypt.
However, seasonal flash-flooding would certainly have produced temporary waterfalls in
desert wadis. A Theban site known as mn.t “may well be the grotto at the western end of the
Valley of the Queens, which with heavy rains looks like a waterfall and whose high ceiling
makes it most suitable as a place of veneration.”183 Visited from the Predynastic to Coptic

23
Fig. 18. Cobra-headed female Netherworld deity heating a cauldron containing the heads and hearts
of the condemned dead in the 3rd register of Division 5 from the Book of Caverns, as depicted in the
tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9): “Iaruty […] who causes the flame to burst into the pan which you
guard.”184 Photo: Author.

Fig. 19. The resurrection of Osiris visualised as a germinating “corn mummy,”185 watered by an
attendant at left, in a relief wall-scene from Karnak. Photo: INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo.186

24
Fig. 20. The 8th Key of the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, engraved by Matthaeus Merian, as published in the
1678 collection Musaeum Hermeticum, Reformatum et Amplificatum, Apud Hermannum à Sande, Frankfurt. This
corresponds to the putrefaction-plus-fermentation stages of the alchemical work;187 the putrefaction of the nigredo
is represented by the four black crows/ravens at far left.188 The image seems to express visually “the idea that the
secret corpse of every deceased person is hidden beneath the body of Aker [the Egyptian double-sphinx earth-god
who symbolises the horizon]. As the guardian of the secret flesh, it is this god, more than any other, who watches
over the mystery of regeneration. [… T]he renewal of consciousness and the potency of life (the ka-soul) have
their origin in Aker, who guards this mystery in the profoundest darkness of the earth.”189 Image: Public domain,
via Wikimedia Commons;190 digitally hand-coloured by the author.191

periods, this grotto contains inscriptions that refer to “water of the sky” (Section 3) and also
contains various drawings (cow, giraffe, female figure, and two graffiti of Hathor). The cave
may have been considered to be the womb of Hathor, from which issued fertility-endowing
water, but there is no physical evidence at the site that connects it with rainbows or snakes.192
Nevertheless, given the rainbow serpent’s status as a culture universal, it is probably safe
to assume that in predynastic Egypt there were at least some waterfall systems – if only
modest in size and infrequent in operation – that were believed to house such creatures. In
modern times, there is at least one waterfall-plus-cave with a resident rainbow-serpent (which
is held to be carnivorous) in the Nilo-Saharan region of Sudan.193 The Mündü of southern
Sudan say that the rainbow is “a giant snake which lives in a hole in the ground, and comes
out to chase heavy rain away (drink the rain?),”194 while the Murle hold that “There are many
rainbows that live in various areas and have their own caves.”195 Among the Bantu-speaking
peoples of west and central Africa, “the mythic cycle of the eternal conflict between lightning
and rainbow is reiterated with numerous variations” (Section 1 & Table 1).196

25
Fig. 21. The children of present-day Abydos perpetuate the Osirian fertility tradition by selling plaited corn
figurines known as arūset el-ḳamḥ (“Bride of the Corn”) to tourists as good-luck charms. Inset: The vendor of the
figurine in the main photo, stationed outside the temple of Rameses II at Abydos in Feb 2020. Photo: Author.

Accordingly, it is likely that there was originally a native Egyptian conception of rainbows
as snake-like supernatural creatures which were both revered and feared. However, by
dynastic times, the Pyramid Texts suggest that rainbows were no longer considered either
autonomous or snake-like; rather, they had become an epiphany of the sun-god’s power, a
symbol of the pristine creation epoch and a stepping-stone to heaven for the king (Section 3).
On the other hand, the control of any elite over folklore and popular belief has always been
tenuous at best. It is therefore of interest to examine the religious and secular literature of
ancient Egypt in search of dragon-like entities, and to examine their properties in search of
attributes that align with known features of rainbow-serpent-dragons in other cultures.
A possible echo of the primitive rainbow/dragon identity may be found in the colours –
and, occasionally, the shape – used to depict Netherworld snake deities in Ramesside royal
tombs. For example, in the tomb of Rameses VI, the snake-god Nehebukau (who we later
find equipped with legs and wings; see ahead to Fig. 92) is depicted in the second tableau of
the 3rd Division of the Book of Caverns as a long snake that arcs over the heads of seven

26
catfish-headed gods;197 the artists have coloured his ventral surface yellow with red hatching
and his dorsal surface blue-green with a black upper outline (Fig. 22). The ventral-to-dorsal
banding is a good approximation of the colour sequence in a primary rainbow, but in reverse
order – perhaps in acknowledgement of the Netherworld as “a distorted mirror image of the
here and now […] a world of confusion, where up and down, right and left, before and after
are all reversed.”198 In any event, the painted banding matches the sequence of colours in the
secondary element of a real-world double rainbow. Of course, the painted colour gradient
may also match the coloration of an actual snake species that the artists had in mind as their
model. Many of the giant snakes in that tomb are painted with an olive-green upper surface
and a yellowish or orange-coloured underbelly, sometimes (as in the case of Nehebukau)
augmented by black mid-line dotting; presumably the inspiration for such designs was some
kind of real-world python.199 At a minimum, we can note the colourful nature of these entities
and register them accordingly in Table 1.

5. Apophis as a malevolent dragon

Apophis is probably the best known dragon-like entity from the world of ancient Egypt. This
beast – aApp (“Apep”) in Egyptian, but rendered “Apophis” by the Greeks – is a giant water-
serpent that opposes the sun-god Re and continually threatens the solar barque, especially on
its nocturnal journey though the Netherworld (Fig. 23). He is very much a chaos-dragon,200
and many of his draconian features are listed in Table 1. The model for some artistic
representations of Apophis may have been the giant African rock python (Python sebae),201
which can reach 6 m in length, while its markings are more in line with the javelin sand boa
(Eryx jaculus).202 Apophis can be thought of as a cosmic ouroboros because he represents

Fig. 22. Nehebukau draped as an arc above seven catfish-headed gods, as depicted in the 3rd Division of the Book
of Caverns, tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9).203 Left inset: zoom of a segment of the snake’s body, to show in greater
detail the longitudinal bands of colour. Right inset: segment from a primary rainbow, inverted by rotation through
180°. The colour sequence in the snake segment is a good approximation to that in the rainbow segment. Photo:
Author.

27
Fig. 23. Apophis being repulsed by Atum, 3rd Hour of the Book of Gates,204 tomb of Rameses I (KV 16).205 Photo:
Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.206

chaos and his watery abode is the celestial and Netherworld ocean (the Nun) that encircles
the world (Fig. 24).207 An alternative – or, to the Egyptian mind, complementary208 – view
posits that one method of overcoming the dangers posed by Apophis is to force him to chew
his own tail,209 thereby turning his destructive power against himself and converting him into
the shape of his nemesis, the encircling and protective serpent Mehen (Section 9).

Of particular interest is Apophis’s dragon-like role as an adversary who denies much-

needed water. “Holding back water is one of the most characteristic activities of dragons, and

Fig. 24. Apophis being restrained and cut in half the celestial waterway, behind the solar barque; detail from the
Book of the Day in the descending corridor of the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

28
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 Ankhtifi at Mo'alla”
during the First Intermediate Period.210 Specifically, Ankhtifi’s inscription states: “The sky is
cloudy, (but) the earth is dried, [Everyone dies] through famine on this sandbank of
Apophis.”211 In the New Kingdom’s royal Netherworld, this image has its religious
counterpart in the 7th Hour of the Amduat, where “The text describes Apopis and his
sandbank on which he is lying after swallowing up the waterway of the sun bark,”212 and in
the 11th Hour of the Book of Gates, “when the boat of the great god [= Re] runs aground at
this neighbourhood of Apopis.”213 Counter-intuitively, we are told that “‘Bringing water’ is
the name of this sandbank;”214 this seems to gesture toward an aspect of the dragon that is
dominant in many cultures, namely the dragon as a bringer of water and agent of flooding.215
We will see below that Apophis – like other dragons216 – is identified with storms; however,
since he is repelled by thunder and lightning (Table 1 & Section 7), this leaves only the wind,
clouds and rain as his potential avatars. Some Egyptological literature claims that Roman-
period texts from Esna say that Apophis was created when the goddess Neith spat out a jet of
saliva,217 which would appear to be another encoding of his identification with water.
However, this interpretation is based on a misreading; the text actually says that Apophis was
created by Neith when she discarded the umbilical cord of her newborn son, Re.218 This
origin-story is attested from the 30th Dynasty and may date back to the New Kingdom.219

In many cultures, rainbow-serpent-dragons perceive the sun as an antagonist (Section 1 &

Table 1).220 Although the cosmogonic dragon-monster of the ancient Near East – Tiamat –
was slain by Marduk, whose cuneiform name-signs seem to identify him as the “bull-calf of
the sun,”221 the negative dragon paradigm of the ancient Near East was not conspicuously
anti-solar. Marduk himself took over the mušhuššu-dragon of the city-gods of Eshnunna as
his signature animal,222 so (as we have already seen) it is depicted repeatedly on the Ishtar
Gate of his city, Babylon (Fig. 4).223 In contrast, the principal dragon of Egypt – Apophis –
was the arch-enemy of the sun-god Re, continually menacing the sun-god with the intention
of immobilising, striking, biting, blinding, killing and/or devouring him,224 and indeed
swallowing the whole solar barque.225 No doubt for reasons of decorum, the threat is typically
downgraded in mythic narrative to Apophis swallowing enough water to make the barque run
aground,226 but the fact that Apophis devours his victims is proven by the temporary re-
appearance of the many human heads “of those who are in him” along the length of his body
in the 6th Hour of the Book of Gates (Fig. 25); Re then exhorts these heads to avenge

Fig. 25. Heads of humans previously devoured by Apophis re-emerging along the length of his body in the 6th
Hour of the Book of Gates, as depicted in the tomb of Rameses III (KV 11).227 Photo: Author.

29
themselves and “swallow him who had swallowed you.”228 Late versions of the struggle of
Re against Apophis have the latter swallowing the Eye of Re and only restoring it when
vanquished and compelled to do so.229 The Book of the Day makes it clear that Apophis’s
attacks on the solar barque are not confined to the night (Fig. 24);230 solar eclipses would
have been interpreted as daytime attempts by Apophis to devour the sun.231

Interestingly, the opposition of Apophis to Re – including the belief that the former is
trying to devour the latter – has a Far Eastern counterpart in the Chinese dragon which, in
many classical images, is shown pursuing the sun or seizing it in its mouth. Over time, the
colour of the sun in such drawings changed from fiery red to silvery-white (Fig. 26),232 so

Fig. 26. Lacquer cabinet with dragon, sun and cloud motifs, Ming dynasty (16-17th century CE); the
flaming sun-disk (to the right of the dragon’s mouth) is coloured pale pink, a transitional stage
between its original red colour and the white of the “night shining pearl.” Photo: Public Domain,
via Wikimedia Commons.233

30
the ball gradually came to be considered a flaming jewel known as the “night-shining pearl”
(Fig. 27).234 This transition was potentially facilitated by related mythic motifs such as the
idea of “‘thunder beads’ dropping from the jaws of a divine dragon and lighting a whole
house at night” (such beads being a transformation of snake-pearls of Indian folklore),235 and
Chinese legends in which “a moonlight pearl is produced in rivers and in the sea, hidden in
the oyster shell, while the water-dragon attacks it.”236
Tibetan artists often portray the dragon as glaring inimically at the night-shining pearl,237 a
baleful stare which has its counterpart in the “evil eye of Apophis” (Fig. 28) – a stare which,
in CT 160, hypnotises the crew of the solar barque and brings the vessel to a standstill.238
This presumably reflects the long-standing folk-belief that snakes are able to charm their prey
and immobilise them before striking,239 a trope which probably finds its most extreme
expression in the petrifying gaze of the snake-haired Gorgon Medusa (Fig. 29).240 In China,
the dragon’s antagonism toward the glowing orb is seen inter alia on a plate of the Song
dynasty and in an installation in Beijing’s Forbidden City, where “the dragon displays great
eagerness to catch and swallow the gleaming sphere.”241 It would not be too surprising if an
act of “swallowing the sun” in illo tempore was thought to be the means by which the
ancestral dragon first became able to breathe fire. One might also suspect a connection with
alchemical images of the Green Lion devouring the sun (Fig. 30);242 perhaps the anomalous
green colour of the lion endows it with a reptilian aspect, thereby rendering it a pseudo-
dragon.243 Chinese legend already accommodates pseudo-dragons (or, to be more precise,
proto-dragons) the other end of the animal spectrum; at Hunan, there is a high cliff-framed

Fig. 27. Two imperial Chinese dragons from the Nine Dragon Wall in Beihai Park, Beijing, carved during the
Qing dynasty (1889-1912). The dragons menace the flame-issuing sun-disk that hovers between them; the disk is
now pure white, the form of the “night-shining pearl.” Image: Splitbrain, via Wikimedia Commons.244

31
Fig. 28. Apophis being killed by the knife-wielding cat of Heliopolis, an agent of Re;245 Tomb of Inherkhau, Deir
el-Medina (TT 359). Note the very large eye of the snake, the source of its malevolent stare or “evil eye.” Photo:
Author.

Fig. 29. Bust of the snake-haired

Gorgon Medusa by Gianlorenzo
Bernini, 17th century; Capitoline
Museums, Rome. Photo: Miguel
Hermoso Cuesta, via Wikimedia
Commons.246

32
Fig. 30. The alchemical Green Lion devouring the sun; in chemical terms, it represents the powerful acid aqua
regia dissolving gold, while in biological terms it can be thought of as the chlorophyll of plants absorbing
sunlight.247 Alchemical and Rosicrucian Compendium, f. 131a v., Lower Rhineland, ca. 1760. Photo: Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.248

waterfall on the Yellow River called the Dragon Gate where, if a carp leaps high enough to
scale the waterfall, it will be magically transformed into a dragon (Fig. 31).249

Where the “night-shining pearl” corresponds to the treasure guarded by Indian and
European dragons, the dragon is presumably positively disposed towards the orb – although it
may still want to eat it to secure its ownership of the jewel.250 Indeed, for some European,

33
Fig. 31. Koji (Cochin) pottery roundel illustrating the four-character Chinese proverb “The carp has leaped
through the dragon’s gate” (see main text). The fish/proto-dragon is here shown chasing the sun/pearl, which has
reprised its original red colour via Koji’s distinctive carmine glaze;251 to suit the watery setting, the disk now sits
on a tongue of water instead of emitting tongues of flame. Modern low-relief roundel of polychrome glazed
low-fired ceramic, Taiwan. Photo: Author.

Indian and American dragons, their treasure is in fact a part of their anatomy;252 this point
will be reprised below (Section 8). One might also see in the pearl an equivalent of the
cosmic egg, which – in Greek philosophy – is treasured by the ouroboros-like serpent/dragon
who wraps himself around it (Fig. 32).253

The ca. 2nd-century CE Hymn of the Pearl from the apocryphal Acts of Thomas is a
Gnostic poem that combines several of the preceding tropes and connects them with Egypt.

34
Fig. 32. The “Orphic Egg,” the serpent encircling the world egg, as understood by the Tyrians. Engraved by James
Basire as Pl. IV in vol. II of in Jacob Bryant (1774) A New System, or, An Analysis of Ancient Mythology, London.
Image: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.254

In the poem, the apostle Thomas’s parents – seemingly the king and queen of Parthia (Persia)
– charge him with a mission:255
“When you go down into Egypt
and bring back the one pearl
that lies in the middle of the sea
and is guarded by the snorting serpent,
you will again put on your robe of glory
and your toga over it,
and with your brother, our next in rank,
you will be heir in our kingdom.”
Thomas accepts the challenge and travels to Egypt. After being distracted into forgetfulness
by the Egyptians – a state described as a deep sleep256 – Thomas is eventually awakened by

35
an eagle bearing a letter “written on Chinese silk” that had been sent by his parents to remind
him of his true identity and quest.257 Thomas continues:258
I remembered the pearl
for which I was sent down into Egypt,
and I began to enchant
the terrible and snorting serpent.
I charmed him into sleep
by calling the name of my father over him
and of my mother, the queen of the east.
I seized the pearl
and turned to carry it to my father.
Those filthy and impure garments
I stripped off, leaving them in the fields,
and went straight on my way
into the light of our homeland in the east.
Thus Thomas succeeds in his mission and is rewarded first with his bejewelled robe and then
with his multicoloured toga, both of which are described in rainbow-like terms. When the
robe conveyed itself spontaneously to Thomas, he tells us:259
… I stretched forth and received it
and put on the beauty of its hues.
I cast my toga of brilliant colors
all around me.
The hymn makes clear that the robe symbolises gnosis; the dragon poses an Apophis-like
threat to the hero’s quest for fulfillment, while the pearl appears to be the wisdom that – as
befits the solar orb – allows the finder’s soul “a return to the light.”260

The guarding of treasure is absent from the characteristics of Apophis himself, as are some
other globally-attested aspects of rainbow-serpent-dragons such as the possession of hair, legs
and fiery breath. If, by dynastic times, the rainbow was being viewed as an extension of the
sun-god, one would expect any archaic link between the rainbow and Re’s dragon-like
antagonist to be vigorously suppressed and overwritten. In view of the already-established
connection between the archer’s weapon and the rainbow, an exception might be found in CT
1094, which refers to Re as “Him who crosses the waterway/the sky when he has heard the
noise of the monster on the great plain north of Stretching-the-bows. It is I who save Re from
the storm of ʿApep, and he will not fall into his bonds” (CT VII: 376-377).261 There is also a
cryptic sentence in CT 1145 which likewise could connect Apophis with a bow: “Stand up, O
Red Ōn [= epithet of the sun]262; I repeat your course when he [seemingly, Apophis]263 has
shot at you, in accordance with your desire.”264 The Amduat, too, has Re request of a
dangerous Netherworld serpent: “Do not spit (fire) at me, nor shoot your arrows against those
in my following.”265 Interestingly, the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which describes Marduk’s
victory over Tiamat, also mentions a celestial bow – not a rainbow but the Bow Star, a
constellation in the night sky. These Coffin Text allusions may likewise refer to asterisms; the
relationship of Apophis to the night sky will be addressed at the end of this section.

A different kind of veiled reference to the dragon-as-rainbow might hide in CT 160. This
spell describes an eastern mountain named BAXw, which may be made of crystal266 or offer
some unusual optical effect,267 upon whose summit the sky rests (CT II: 375c-376a).268 This
habitat seems to combine height/sky with refracted light,269 especially colours from the red
end of the spectrum, for it is the domain of the crocodile-god Sobek, whose temple there is

36
made of carnelian.270 Red-orange-yellow are of course the dominant colours of sunrise
(Section 3),271 which also takes place in the east, but in CT 160 the chromatic effects seem to
be attributed not to the sun but to its antagonist, the serpent Apophis,272 who lives at the top
of the mountain and who in this context seems to be an extension of Sobek. In this spell the
serpent is called tp.y Dw, “He Who is Upon the Mountain,” and whn=f or whm=f, “He Who is
In His Flame”273 or “He With Glowing Heat” (CT II: 379a).274 In terms of global ethnology,
red is the colour most closely associated with the rainbow-serpent-dragon,275 which hints that
this Egyptian crocodile-snake may belong to that mythological genus. Whatever material
BAXw is made from, it provides power to its resident reptile; as Seth tells the creature, “your
strength belongs to your mountain” (CT II: 384).276 If this spell does connect Apophis with
rainbow-like colours, it is remarkable for doing so without involving any form of water (other
than metonymically, via the inclusion of Sobek).277

In the Coffin Texts, Apophis is found primarily in the sky and at the boundaries of the
horizon;278 given the Egyptian valorisation of solar phenomena, it would not be surprising if
he was largely relegated to the darkness of the night sky.279 In CT 473, the deceased
threatens: “I will go down onto its [= the Winding Waterway’s] riparian lands, I will fell
ʿApep, and I will glitter there” (CT VI: 16).280 The verb translated by “glitter” is xbs, “to
illuminate,”281 which would be appropriate for a rainbow, but we are next told that the
deceased has already “illuminated” as Sobek and Anti, activities which are less easy to
reconcile with daytime natural events. It seems more likely that these statements relate to
constellations or other bright features of the night sky, with the “Winding Waterway” being
the Milky Way.282 Apophis has been linked with the ancient Egyptian constellation Htp-
rdwy,283 the crocodile (Fig. 33), which corresponds to the Babylonian serpent-constellation

Fig. 33. The Northern crocodile constellation Htp-rdwy (“Lying on his feet”) appears below the lion and is speared
by the Unnamed Harpooner at bottom left; the modern identifications of these constellations are Hydra, Leo and
Gemini, respectively.284 Usually shown within astronomical ceilings, this group forms a painted wall-scene at the
entrance to the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

37
MUL.DINGIR.MUŠ. The latter is the Akkadian Bašmu, a giant horned snake with two forelegs
and multiple heads that fought alongside Tiamat;285 its Hellenic successor is the serpentine
water-monster Hydra (Fig. 34).286 The brightest star in this constellation (α-Hydrae) is
Alphard, from the Arabic ʾAl-Pard ʾal-Shuja, “the Solitary One in the Serpent.”287 It has been
suggested that, in ancient Egypt, “the very prominent and fairly orange Alphard could have
been perceived as the eye of the giant crocodile” that was identified with Apophis;288 if so,
this would have provided a physical correlate for the previously-mentioned “evil eye of
Apophis.” On the Dendera Zodiac, the Egyptian crocodile has morphed into the Greco-
Babylonian “giant serpent, which is depicted as a slightly erected dragon” (Fig. 35).289

Since the earliest mention of Apophis occurs in the First Intermediate Period, it is natural
to wonder whether any precursors might lurk in the literature of the Old Kingdom.
Malevolent snakes such as the rrk snake appear the Pyramid Texts,290 and Susanne Bickel has
suggested a possible identity of some of the malevolent snakes in this corpus with Apophis.291
She suggests that “It is quite possible that certain Pyramid Text spells directed against evil
snakes – bypassing the name – already refer to Apophis. Spell 298 even mentions a fight
between Re and a serpent: ‘Re rises, his uraeus above him, against this serpent (HfA), which
came out of the earth under Unas’ fingers; he cuts off its (<your) head with this knife that is
in Mafdet’s hand...’”292

Fig. 34. Herakles and Iolaos fight the nine-headed Hydra in a black-figure design on an Etruscan terracotta vessel,
530-500 BCE. Getty Villa Museum, CA, cat. 83.AE.346. Photo: Getty Center, via Wikimedia Commons.293

38
Fig. 35. Hydra (the snake) under Leo (the lion) in the Dendera Zodiac (ca. 50 BCE); the bird on the snake’s tail
is Corvus (the crow). Detail of ceiling relief from the Temple of Hathor, Dendera, now Louvre E 13482. Photo:
Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.294

At the other end of dynastic Egypt’s long history, inscriptions from the Ptolemaic temple
of Edfu feature a rebellious Hemhemty-serpent (hmhm.ty, “the Roarer,” a serpent identified
with Apophis)295 who turned himself into a “winged Sebty-snake” and took to the sky in an
attempt to seize control of the primeval mound from Horus Behdety.296 However, the rebel
was vanquished and driven away by Horus in the latter’s usual form of a falcon.297

6. Ammut’s appetite for evil

After Apophis, the next dragon-like chimera to come to mind from the world of ancient Egypt
is likely to be Ammut, a creature well known to us from the vignettes on New Kingdom
funerary papyri (Figs. 36 & 37).

Ammut is a tripartite hybrid of cold- and warm-blooded creatures – a composite of

crocodile, lion (or occasionally leopard) and hippopotamus298 – which de facto qualifies her
as a dragon. Her crocodile head and hippopotamus hindparts unite her to the domain of water,
while the golden colour of her leonine neck, mane and forelimbs confer a potentially solar
aspect to her terrestrial nature. As a fusion of cold with heat and wet with dry, she is ideally
positioned to serve as a rainbow-dragon, even though she lacks a serpentine body-shape and
has no known association with the colour spectrum.

The crocodile, lion and hippopotamus are all dangerous to humans; these three were so
feared by Egyptians that, in a curse-formula inscribed in the 4th-Dynasty mastaba of Petety,
they were the very animals assigned to eat any miscreants.299 By the New Kingdom, parts
from each of the three had become combined to form Ammut, the “devouress of the dead.”300

39
Fig. 36. Ammut resting in front of the feather of maat and beside the Lake of Fire (Spell 126) from the Book of
the Dead on the 18th-Dynasty Papyrus of Nebqed; Louvre cat. N 3068 & N 3113. Image: Public Domain, via
Wikimedia Commons.301

Her job was to consume those who failed the posthumous test at the Weighing of the Heart
ceremony, i.e. the Judgement depicted in vignettes that accompany Spell 125 in the Book of
the Dead.302 Those whose hearts were eaten by “the gobbler” became truly dead, having been
annihilated and consigned eternally to oblivion.303
Both Apophis and Ammut readily present themselves as dragons to the modern mind
because they conform to the negative European perception of dragons as hostile and
threatening reptilians that terrorise their human opponents through brute force. Yet, in ancient
Egyptian terms, Ammut is utterly dissimilar to Apophis. Apophis opposes maat; he takes
every opportunity to attack the gods and seeks to reduce the world to chaos. Ammut, despite
inspiring dread in the hearts of New Kingdom Egyptians, always acts in accordance with
maat and does no more than implement the fully justified will of the gods. In Section 9 we
will encounter other fearsome but correctly-acting Egyptian dragons whose protective and/or
punitive powers make them lethal to their enemies.

40
 Fig. 37. Ammut in the Weighing of the Heart vignette from the Book of the Dead on
the 19th-Dynasty Papyrus of Hunefer; British Museum cat. EA 9901,3. Image: Public
Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.304

Ammut’s moral rectitude means that there is never any need for an antagonist to control,
subjugate or vanquish her. The same is not true of Apophis, whose malicious and destructive
urges need to be countered continually by one or more of the gods. Deities that are able to
assume this role form the topic of the next section.

7. Egyptian dragon-slayers

Seth is an ambivalent god of force who was feared as the murderer of Osiris and rival of
Horus. Over time, his role as a storm-god allowed him to be assigned a positive role as a
defender of the solar barque against Apophis (Fig. 38),305 where he acts a Thunderer striking
a dragon.306 The two-forked spear that he wields against Apophis in some images (mtA,
mtAy.t)307 could represent lightning as well as a snake-catcher’s staff, and the two-pronged
lower terminal of the wAs-sceptre308 – which Seth often holds, and which has the head of the
Seth-animal at its top – could be viewed in the same way.

41
Fig. 38. Seth spearing Apophis from the prow of the solar barque; vignette from the 20th-Dynasty Papyrus of
Heruben B.309 Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.310

In CT 1069, we read of the connection of Apophis to weather events (here, storms) and the
opposition of both the sun-god and thunder/lightning to Apophis: “I am the lizard which
created thunder, who lifts up Maʿet to Rēʿ and repels the strength of ʿApep, who splits up the
sky [presumably with lightning] and drives away the storm, and who nourishes the crews of
Rēʿ” (CT VII: 332).311 Similarly, in CT 1099: “Praise to you Rēʿ, Lord of the horizon; hail to
you for whom the sun-folk are pure, for whom the sky controls those who are in charge of the
great striking-power [again, presumably lightning], and the oars of those who are hostile are
broken. See, I have come among those who show forth truth, since he who is far distant is in
the West. I break up the storm of ʿApep; O Double Lion, I am he who prophesies to you” (CT

42
VII: 400-402).312 Likewise in CT 1179: “I am Many-faced who created thunder, who mounts
up to Rēʿ and repels the strength of ʿApep, who splits open the sky and drives away storm,
and who nourishes the crews of Rēʿ” (CT VII: 517).313 The mysterious “lizard” (aSA) of CT
1069 (CT VII: 332f) is probably just an abbreviation for the “Many-faced one” (aSA-Hr.w) of
CT 1179 (CT VII: 517a),314 a divine epithet which in this case probably refers to Seth.315
In Egypt, the thunder–bird association found in many cultures (and which is especially
prominent in the North American Thunderbird)316 seems to have travelled initially not with
Seth but with Min, the god of the lightning-bolt who – during the Middle Kingdom – became
closely identified with the falcon-god Horus.317 However, a later current did associate the
relevant avian traits with Seth. Accordingly, in scenes on Ramesside stelae, Seth is frequently
depicted as a winged god in his role of opposing Apophis.318 Likewise, in the oases, Seth is
represented exclusively as falcon-headed god from the end of the Third Intermediate Period
until Ptolemaic times.319 For example, on a 27th-Dynasty relief from the temple of Hibis in
the oasis of Kharga, Seth appears with a falcon’s head in a double crown and with two wings,
wielding a spear against a serpentine Apophis (Fig. 39).320 He appears similarly on the Greco-
Roman Stela of Seth from Amheida (Fig. 40).321

Fig. 39. Seth as a winged and falcon-headed god spearing Apophis, 27th Dynasty; relief in the Temple
of Hibis, Kharga Oasis. Photo: Roland Unger, via Wikimedia Commons.322

43
Fig. 40. Seth as a winged falcon-headed god spearing Apophis. Greco-Roman “Stela of Seth from
Amheida,” from a site in the western part of the Dakhla Oasis. Photo: Bagnall et al. (2015: Fig.
15).323

44
 An early royal appropriation of the rainbow as a manifestation of the sun-god’s creative
power (Section 3) would explain why, in Egypt, the colour spectrum was disfavoured as an
attribute of negative dragons and instead became a feature of their slayers. Slippage of this
kind is not uncommon; for example, in Section 5, we saw the dragon-beating apostle Thomas
being rewarded with rainbow-like apparel. In addition, the Indic dragon-slayer Indra is armed
with a rainbow as well as with lightning (Fig. 41),324 and the vibrant colours and stripes of
many Native American Thunderbird totems hint at a similar appropriation in North America
(Figs. 42 & 43).325 Perhaps Thoth is considered to be an inheritor the rainbow when BD 30
says “Apophis is fallen to thy bondage. […for] He who is Over the Colors (i.e. Thoth) has
bound him.”326 However, as with the Vedic Garuda – a kind of eagle327 – the Egyptian
dragon-slayers were more usually impressive raptors – for example Horus, the falcon “of
multicoloured plumage” (sAb Swt) (Figs. 44, 45 & 46).328 The Egyptian vulture, too, can prey
on snakes and other small reptiles, as recognised in PT 732 (§2260),329 so this could explain

Fig. 41. Indra, armed with a bow and encircled by a rainbow, by Sudhansu Ajaudharany (ca. 1930); San Diego
Museum of Art, cat. 1990.1462. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.330

45
Fig. 42. Thunderbird House Totem Pole, carved by Tony Hunt in 1987 as a copy of an older pole from the early
1900s (now in the Vancouver Museum). Photo: Francisco Anzola, via Wikimedia Commons.331

Fig. 43. Thunderbird transformation mask, 19th century; in this case the head of the rainbow-serpent-dragon as
well as its vibrantly coloured stripes, have been added to the underside of the wings as decoration. Brooklyn
Museum, cat. 08.491.8902. Photo: Namgis (Native American), via Wikimedia Commons.332

46
Fig. 44. Falcon pendant depicting Re-Horakhty, tomb of Tutankhamun (KV 62). Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE
61893. Photo: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.333

Fig. 45. Horus Behdety, depicted as a winged sun-disk on the underside of a lintel at the mortuary temple of
Rameses III, Medinet Habu. Photo: Author.

47
Fig. 46. Vibrantly coloured Horus from the 18th Dynasty tomb of Roy, Dra' Abu el-Naga', Theban necropolis (TT
255).334

48
why vividly coloured plumage was also extended to the vulture-goddess Nekhbet (Fig. 47),
the principal defender of the king in Upper Egypt,335 who – paradoxically – can herself
assume the form of a winged cobra (Fig. 48). In art, then,336
the vultures on the ceilings of monuments or the falcons of Edfu hovering over the lintel of
doors in the form of a winged disc display multi-colored plumage […] This is not naturalistic,
since such birds of prey in reality have rather dull plumage made of brown, black or gray. Their
variegation, on the contrary, takes on the meaning of a hieroglyph in its own right signifying
the light of the sky in which they evolve. This hieroglyph is also underlined by the epithet “with

Fig. 47. Colourful plumage of the protective vulture-goddess of Upper Egypt, Nekhbet, on small and large scales.
Upper: Small, in the Middle Kingdom pectoral of the princess Merit (Egyptian Museum, Cairo, cat. SR1/7188).
Lower: Large, as painted on the ceiling of the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photos: Author (for pectoral, during
loan to Australian Museum, Sydney).

Fig. 48. Nekhbet in the form of a winged cobra, tomb of Nefertari (QV 66), inner staircase.337 Photo: Author.

49
 multicolored plumage” (sab chout) many times attributed to these large celestial birds, the
multiplicity of colors being the only possible mode of graphic expression of solar light. It was
not until the Amarna period, in the 14th century BC, that we took the step towards the direct
representation of the latter through the rays of the sun. Until then confined only to the register
of writing, they then invaded all forms of representation of the world and chased from temples
and tombs the images of birds of prey with colorful feathers.

Seth’s role as dragon-slayer reached its zenith during the Ramesside period but then
suffered a sharp decline; during the Late Period, Seth was actively demonised. In Ptolemaic
times this resulted in his earlier identity being reversed; he became conflated with Typhon, a
Greek dragon,338 and – instead of spearing Apophis (Fig. 38) – Seth was now shown as the
evil water-creature (hippopotamus or crocodile) being speared by Horus (Fig. 49). Horus was

Fig. 49. Horus standing on a boat and spearing Seth in the form of a hippopotamus; Ptolemaic wall relief, Temple
of Edfu. Inset: Close-up of the Seth-hippopotamus from bottom left of the scene. Photo: Author.

50
sometimes shown spearing Seth from horseback (Fig. 50) in a manner that prefigured the
Christian legend of St. George spearing the dragon.339 Nevertheless, Seth’s original role as
the spearer of Apophis was retained in some contexts, as attested by late Roman images from
the oases which show Seth spearing Apophis from horseback (Fig. 51), in a manner that
(once again) prefigures St. George spearing the dragon.340 We will return to St. George and
his dragon toward the end of the paper (Section 12).

8. The Shipwrecked Sailor’s snake-god as a beneficent dragon

An unusually wide-ranging set of rainbow-dragon characteristics – a watery abode,

connection with storms, bright colours, facial hair, fiery breath, potential for earthquake, the
guarding of treasure and a vulnerability to thunderbolts – is evident in the attributes of the
snake-god in the Middle Kingdom Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. This giant serpent lived on
an island that was normally underwater, and was itself likened to a wave of the ocean; the

Fig. 50. Horus on horseback spearing Seth in the form of a crocodile; 4th-century CE sandstone window fragment
from Faras, Lower Nubia (near the modern Sudan/Egypt border); Louvre cat. E 4850. Photo: Rama, via Wikimedia
Commons.341

51
Fig. 51. A figure with the head of the Seth animal, adorned with Hathor-horns and sun-disk, appears on horseback
spearing Apophis (not visible) in a 4th-century CE fresco (no longer extant) at Ain et-Turba in the Kharga Oasis.
He is assisted by a human as well as a winged, crowned and falcon-headed deity, both bearing spears and mounted
on horseback (neither shown here); all three figures are understood to be representations of Seth.342 Photo:
Metropolitan Museum of Art Egypt Expedition, 1908-1909; Public Domain image with bright areas of plaster loss
masked in mauve by the author to improve clarity.

snake’s approach was mistaken for the sound of a storm;343 being adorned with gold and lapis
lazuli, its body was bright and vividly coloured (Fig. 52); it had human-like hair, and
specifically a large plaited beard (Fig. 52); it could breathe fire, insofar as it threatened to turn
the sailor to ashes; its arrival was accompanied by earth tremors; its island kingdom
possessed all manner of riches and exotic goods; and the celestial impact and resulting
fireball that had earlier obliterated its extended family was, of course, a type of
thunderbolt.344

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Fig. 52. Mosaic impression of the Shipwrecked Sailor’s snake-deity. As no historical illustrations exist, this image
was generated from the sailor’s description using Pixlr generative AI,345 with manual augmentation by the author.

Many of these traits repay further examination. The fact that the snake could choose to
withhold the waters from its home – thereby causing it to take the form of an island –
constitutes a novel twist on the paradigm of the dragon as a withholder of water in general
(and of rain in particular). That the sailor mistook the snake-god’s approach for the onset of a
storm connects the deity with the giving of rain. The fact that the snake-deity had a skin of
precious metal (gold) and eyebrows of valuable stone (lapis) is consistent with Egyptian
belief about the composition of the gods in general,346 but also conforms to the pattern –
attested in Europe, south Asia and the Americas – whereby a treasure (jewel, gold, etc.) forms
part of the dragon’s anatomy, usually as part of its head.347 In Egyptian thought, the snake-

53
deity’s plaited beard was a necessary marker of the being’s divinity,348 but its presence also
fulfills the expectation – found inter alia in the ancient Near East and Europe – that a dragon
should have hair.349 In central Africa, the Zande of Zaire tell of a large rainbow serpent called
Ngambue, who likewise has a beard.350 E. Maksimov called the sailor’s snake-deity “a huge
bearded dragon” and thought that it had human legs and a human face.351 While it definitely
was a bearded dragon, the text provides little justification for attributing to it the additional
two features, which are highly anthropomorphic.352

The fiery breath attested of the sailor’s snake-deity is a trait associated with the dragons of
Europe, India, and the Far East rather than those of the ancient Near East,353 but many
Egyptian serpent-deities were credited with the ability to spit fire. This power may have been
modelled on the ability of some real-world Egyptian snakes, such as Naja nigricollis,354 to
spit venom into the eyes of their prey, which would have experienced the poison as an intense
burning sensation,355 but that does not alter the fact that emitting fire is a distinctive feature of
dragons. The theme of spitting or breathing fire will be reprised in the next section.

While the island’s snake-god guarded the exotic produce of his realm, the more specific
trope of guarding an underground treasure is manifested to some extent in a number of
Netherworld snake-deities. These too will be considered in detail in the next section.

One distinctive behaviour of the island’s snake-god is that it picked up and carried the
sailor gently using its mouth: “Then he set me in his mouth and took me off to his resting
place. He set me down without touching me. I was intact without his taking anything from
me.”356 This has echoes in a cosmogonic myth from 19th-century Dahomey (now Benin) in
west Africa. “In the beginning Mawu [a culture hero] was carried in the mouth of Aido
Hwedo, the serpent, who existed before the earth did.”357 That snake too caused earthquakes
when it moved.358

9. Other correctly-acting Egyptian dragons: From fire to water

In addition to the Shipwrecked Sailor’s snake-deity, many other Egyptian serpent-deities are
credited with the ability to spit fire: the Lower Egyptian cobra goddess Wadjet, in her role as
uraeus,359 is the best known (Fig. 53). Neith, another goddess from Lower Egypt, can also
serve in the same role (Fig. 54), as can the cobra-goddess Renenutet, whose cult was in the
Fayum.360 The uraeus protects the deceased king in the Netherworld from her vantage point
on the forehead of his funerary mask (Fig. 55); above ground, she also protects the current
king who, for Egyptians, would constitute a “living treasure” (Fig. 56). Other fire-spitting
protective snake-deities feature at specific points in the Netherworld (e.g. Fig. 17).361

The 6th Hour of the Book of Gates contains a serpent in a pit of flames;362 the actions of
this snake, which is female,363 protect and benefit Osiris. We are told that:364
a living cobra is in this fiery pit. The water of (this) pit is fire. Without the gods of the Earth
and the Ba-souls of the Earth being able to approach this fiery pit, because of the flame of this
cobra; but this great god at the head of the Duat [= Osiris] breathes by the unapproachable water
of this fiery pit. […] The water of the fiery pit belongs to Osiris, and your refreshment to the
Foremost of the Duat! (But) your blast of fire, your amber, is against the Ba-souls who will
approach to violate Osiris.
This paradoxical image presents a perfect example of “the image of a snake-dragon that

54
Fig. 53. Thoth presenting the dual form of Wadjet (wD.ty, the two uraei, representing the two crowns of
Egypt),365 each shown as a crowned cobra coiled around a sceptre. Osiris suite, temple of Seti I, Abydos.
Photo: Author.

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Fig. 54. Two views of Neith as uraeus, removed from a 12th-Dynasty royal crown of Senwosret II; the goddess’s
symbol is displayed horizontally in the centre of the hood, but here is largely obscured by shadow. Egyptian
Museum, Cairo, JE 46694. Photo: Author (while on loan to Australian Museum, Sydney).

symbolizes water as well as fire;”366 it is likely that the cobra of the pit exhales this magical
fire, just as Osiris lives by inhaling it. Similarly paradoxical notions about the fungibility of
fire, water and air persist in connection with dragons in European alchemy;367 for example,
part of a poem in a 16th-century alchemical work known as the Ripley Scroll (Fig. 57)
reads:368
On the ground there is a hill
Also a serpent within a well
His tail is long with wings wide
All ready to fly on every side
[…]
The well must burn in Water clear
Take good heed for this thy Fire
The Fire with Water burnt shall be
And Water with Fire wash shall he
Then Earth on Fire shall be put
And Water with Air shall be knit

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Fig. 55. Neith as uraeus on the gilded wooden mask on the coffin of king Amenemope, 21st Dynasty; Egyptian
Museum, Cairo, JE 86059. Photo: Author (while on loan to Australian Museum, Sydney).

57
Fig. 56. Wadjet as the uraeus on the king’s blue “war crown,” Osiris suite, temple of Seti I, Abydos. Photo: Author.

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Fig. 57. George Ripley (ca. 1570) Ripley Scroll, panels 6-7, Mellon MS 41, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University; detail of the lowest part of the alchemical emblem showing the pool of fire, the resident
dragon (which is eating a venomous toad) and the text of the poem. Photo: Public Domain; Beinecke Library via
Obelisk Art History.369

Thereafter the poem focuses on the colour sequence of the alchemical magnum opus (Section
3): black, multicolour, white and finally red.370 An intermediate stage in the shared “well of
fire” trope may be found in Pindar’s and Aeschylus’s 5th-century BCE accounts of Typhon
being imprisoned under Mt. Etna, where the resulting volcanic activity is described in terms
of “that serpent [who] sends up fountains of fire” and “springs belching unapproachable
fire.”371 The fire/air and fire/water equivalences are present too, as evidenced by reference to
“fire-breathing Typhon” who “will boil up with an unapproachable rain of fire.”372
As anticipated in respect of the unnamed cobra of the pit, fire can also be used to inflict
punishment on those who deserve it. For example, the 11th Hour of the Amduat depicts and
describes the snake sti HH.w, “He Who Burns Millions,” as spitting fire and flames into a pit
that contains wrong-doers; several anthropomorphic goddesses assist him by doing
likewise.373 In the 9th Hour of the Book of Gates, a giant male snake called x.ty, “The Fiery
One” (Fig. 58) is encouraged by Horus thus:374

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Fig. 58. “The Fiery One,” a giant snake whose coils are guarded by seven “children of Horus,” spews fire (shown
as a granular spray) at the enemies of Osiris in the 9th Hour of the Book of Gates; detail from the scene in the tomb
of Queen Tawseret (KV 14), where the head of the snake has been deliberately gouged out. Inset: the spray of fire
from the similarly-erased head of “The Fiery One” in the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.375

“O fiery one, with great flame […] Open your mouth and unlock your jaws, that you put flames
into the enemies of my father! May you burn their corpses and cook their Ba-souls by that fiery
blaze which is in your mouth, by the flame which is in your body. […] Then the flame goes
forth which is in this serpent, then these enemies are burned, after Horus has called to him.”

Mehen is a protective encircling snake in the Netherworld, a form of ouroboros;376

representations of snakes that form circular enclosures with their bodies date back to the
Predynastic period (Fig. 59). The “mysteries of Mehen” (StAw mHn) are referred to in CT 493
and 495 (CT VI: 77d,i), where it seems that one function of Mehen is to hold the enemies of
Re prisoner in his coils.377 The mysteries are detailed more explicitly in CT 758-760 (CT VI:
386-390). The latter depict a realm of the afterlife in which the bark of Mehen travels on nine
concentric roads, four of which are roads of fire.378 Moreover, the spells indicate that the
coiled Mehen is the roadway itself, spiralling inward towards Re.379 This spiral journey was
the basis of the “coiled-serpent game,” a board-game known from the Predynastic period
onward (Fig. 60).380 Peter Piccione understands the opening lines of PT 332 to describe the
king coming forth from the Mehen-board and exiting on the fiery breath of this snake.381 If
so, Mehen is another Netherworld snake-deity endowed with the dragon-like ability to
breathe fire, and in this case his flaming breath confers upon the deceased king a rebirth,
transfiguration and ascension.382 In the New Kingdom, by which time the board game was no
longer played (but had not been forgotten completely),383 Mehen is represented in vignettes

60
 Fig. 59. Predynastic ceremonial palette, late Naqada III, with encircling snake motif
– a spiral rather than a fully circular ouroboros. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New
York), cat. 28.9.8. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.384

of the Netherworld books such as the Amduat, and therefore features extensively in tomb
wall-scenes in the Valley of the Kings and on funerary papyri. He no longer appears in the
form of a tight radial coil, but rather takes the form of a very long sinuous snake that is
draped over the shrine-like booth of Re on the solar barque (Figs. 61 & 62), his body forming
a (rainbow-like?) arc over the sun-god. In this configuration he protects Re from Apophis and
other evils on the sun-god’s nocturnal journey through the Netherworld (Fig. 63).
In the 6th Hour of the Amduat, an encircling five-headed snake – who may just be another
embodiment of Mehen – protects the union of Re with Osiris at the mid-point of the sun-
god’s nocturnal journey (Fig. 64).385 This snake is called aSA-Hr.w, “Many faced,” and the text
explains that he encloses the sun-god’s body: “This is the corpse of Khepri as his own flesh,
‘Many-faced’ guards him. He is like this: His tail is in his mouth.”386 The tail of the snake is

61
 Fig. 60. Mehen game board from the Old Kingdom, alabaster and pigment. Oriental Institute
Museum, University of Chicago, cat. 16950. Photo: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.387

Fig. 61. Mehen protectively encircling the booth of Re on the solar barque, tomb of Rameses IV (KV 2). The
scene is directly comparable to that in Fig. 62 but includes the figure of the king making an offering to Re. Photo:
Author.

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Fig. 62. Mehen protectively encircling the booth of Re on the solar barque, 9th Hour of Book of Gates,388 tomb of
Rameses VI (KV 9).389 Photo: Author.

Fig. 63. Mehen protectively encircling Re on the barque (at left) with Apophis (menaced by nine knife-wielding
gods) fettered to the “children of Horus” (at right); 12th Hour of Book of Gates,390 tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9).
Compare the chained serpent to the roped serpopards on the Narmer palette of two millennia earlier, which
presumably likewise represent royal victory over disorder and chaos. Photo: Author.

Fig. 64. Detail from the end of the central register of the 6th Hour of the Amduat, showing the union of Re (the
khepri scarab) with his corpse (= the body of Osiris) within a five-headed ouroboros, as depicted in the tomb of
Seti I (KV 17). The conjoined scarab and human head are equivalent to the two heads of Rebis in Figs. 69, 70, 83
lower & 85). Photo: kairoinfo4u, via Flickr.391

63
indeed in (or very close to) the mouth of the foremost head.392 Much later, multi-headed
ouroboroi persist – or reappear – in the emblems of European alchemy (Fig. 65).393
A guardian snake-deity called Heneb (Hnb) is attested from the 26th Dynasty to the
Ptolemaic Period;394 he seems to be a continuation of a similar deity named Heneba (HnbAA)
from the Middle Kingdom (CT 336 & 436).395 He protected the city of Herakleopolis, where
he had a temple and priesthood.396 He was believed to oversee the safety of the deceased in
the Netherworld and to guard the body of Osiris during the Mysteries of Khoiak.397 He wields
a knife, and is qualified to decapitate both Seth and Apophis.398 A Late Period bronze
sculpture of a snake-headed human male may represent Heneb.399
Fifteen coffins and sarcophagi from the Third Intermediate to Roman Periods depict a
well-intentioned snake-god named Hayshesh (1AySS; occasionally IASS, Iashesh), who is often
placed near the shoulder of the coffin.400 Hayshesh had a protective funerary function,
animating the Ba in the necropolis and guarding the mummy of the deceased.401 The

Fig. 65. Triple-headed ouroboros-dragon from the Clavis Artis, attributed to Zoroaster, a German manuscript of
the late 17th or early 18th century; Biblioteca Civica Attilio Hortis, Trieste, Ms-2-27. This alchemical manuscript
“contains a menagerie of triple-headed dragon-snakes.”402 Over the three heads of this dragon appear (left to right)
the symbols for mercury, sulphur and salt. Inset: Detail from Emblem 3 of J.D. Mylius’s Philosophia reformata,
1622, showing a triple-headed ouroboros-snake in a sphere; above the sphere (area cropped, not shown), the Sun
King and Moon Queen sit back-to-back, holding the classic symbols of the magnum opus: raven/crow, peacock,
white swan and Red King.403 Photo: Public Domain.

64
appearance of the creature evolved over time. In the 22nd-26th Dynasties, it had the body of a
snake (usually with a single coil) topped by a naturalistic horse’s head with ears, mane and
muzzle.404 In the Ptolemaic Period, the chimera had the body of a snake (with two or more
coils) topped by a head of unclear origin, but often horse-like, with paired ears (or horns) and
a thin central protuberance that appears to be a central S-shaped horn.405 Although the
resemblance has not hitherto been remarked, the head of this animal on the Ptolemaic
sarcophagus of Amuniu closely resembles the “antelope heads” that feature in the opening
vignette of the Litany of Re in Ramesside tombs, which have ears and paired horns plus the
same unicorn-like protuberance (Fig. 66).406 It is worth noting that antelope-headed fish
hybrids date back to the Predynastic period (Fig. 67).407 Since this form of Hayshesh appears
to have the head of a tricornute fantasy creature,408 it may usefully be compared with the
Babylonian mušhuššu, another imaginary beast which is sometimes depicted with three horns
(Fig. 4). The looped snake-like body possessed by this version of Hayshesh has prompted
Egyptologists to describe it as “a dragon-like sea serpent.”409

From the late 26th Dynasty to the Roman Period, another version of Hayshesh co-existed
with those already described; this form had the body of a snake (with two coils) and the head

Fig. 66. Opening vignette of the Litany of Re, tomb of Seti II (KV 15), detail; Inset: head of Hayshesh from the
Ptolemaic sarcophagus of Amuniu (Egyptian Museum, Cairo, JE 13/1/21/1). In the complete vignette, an inverted
antelope head with a unicorn-like third horn accompanies a snake (top portion, not shown) and a normally-oriented
one accompanies a crocodile (bottom portion, shown);410 they may all be enemies of Re that have been put to
flight,411 or bodyguards that have been dispatched to battle opponents of the sun-god.412 Photo: Author.

65
Fig. 67. Siltstone/Greywacke palette, Naqada II, seemingly in the shape of a fish-antelope hybrid.413 Metropolitan
Museum of Art (New York), cat. 10.176.84. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art.414

of a hippopotamus or – in a pair on the ceiling of the Temple of Khnum at Esna – the head of
a crocodile (Fig. 68).415 The paired examples in the 26-27th Dynasty tomb of Iufaa at Abusir
are described as:416
‘this splendid god, who swims (in) the sea (nTr pn mnx mH wAD-wr)’, giving information about
the ‘natural habitat’ of the god. A longer text below comprises a very instructive description of
the outer appearance: It is a creator god (nTr aA n sp tpy), its name is Red (dSr), its head is like
a female hippopotamus of lapis lazuli, its body like hematite, and it lives near the mouth of the
sea (rA n wAD-wr) with two different locations for both snakes (hA.w-nb.wt and Sn-rxy.t).
Overall, the forms of this “Egyptian hippokampos” may be completely fantastic or may have
been inspired by real terrestrial and marine creatures, the latter potentially ranging from the
diminutive sea-horse to the snake-like giant oarfish.417 Globally, there is a recurring link
between dragons and horses or other hoofed mammals (which would of course include
antelopes);418 analogues of Hayshesh from other cultures could include the dragon-horse of
China and Japan, and the nixie or kelpie, the water-horse of Scottish legend.419

Although Apophis may have been relegated to the night sky (Section 5), this domain was
home to beneficent dragons as well. Kebehwet, a helpful celestial serpent – the daughter of
Anubis and “sister of the king” in the Pyramid Texts (PT 515, 535, 548, 582, 619, 674, 690,
691B)420 – probably belongs in the night sky, based on information contained in PT 535.421

One curious but widely distributed property of rainbows, which normally does not extend
to their serpent counterparts, is that of category reversal. In Europe, Pakistan and Brazil, the
rainbow is believed to cause a change of sex;422 in Paraguay, a substitution of one language
for another; in Indonesia, a change of ethnicity; in Flores, a loss of sanity.423 It is therefore
interesting to note that, in the 12th hour of the Amduat, the process that symbolises the
renewal of life out of death – one in which time is reversed – is envisaged as a tail-to-head

66
Fig. 68. Hayshesh pair from the ceiling of the temple of Khnum at Esna; south (top, cleaned)
and north (bottom, uncleaned in 2020). Photo: Author.

67
passage of the solar barque through a giant serpent named Ankh-Netjeru (anx-nTr.w), “Life of
the Gods.”424 Specifically:425
They [= 12 gods] tow this great god [= Re] through the spine of (the serpent) “Life of the gods.”
The venerated (deceased) of Re, who are behind him and in front of him: They are born in the
earth, day after day, after the birth of this great god in the east of the sky. They enter into the
mysterious image of (the serpent) “Life of the gods” as venerated ones, and they come out as
the rejuvenated of Re, day after day. […] He [= “Life of the gods”] has a spine of 1300 cubits
in length, (measured by) sacred god-cubits. He lives from the voice of the murmuring of the
venerated ones, who are in his spine and who come out from his mouth, day after day.
Of course, the ability of snakes to periodically slough their skins underpins their universal
adoption as symbols of rejuvenation and rebirth, so perhaps that is the principal concept
underpinning this image. Nevertheless, the details of the Netherworld process are revealing.
The normal passage of time is represented by the female sky-deity Nut swallowing the sun-
disc at sunset and giving birth to it again in the morning. In the Amduat passage, the reversal
of time is denoted by a journey through the male Ankh-Netjeru in which each person enters
dead through the snake’s vent and exits alive from his mouth.426 The most striking aspect of
the Egyptian rejuvenation process is the way in which all of the normal categories are
reversed. In this it echoes the Old Kingdom board-game (discussed above in this section) in
which the deceased king travels from tail to head around the coiled Mehen serpent, exiting
reborn from his mouth on the serpent’s fiery breath.427

The symbolism of the Mehen game has a much later counterpart in European alchemy,
where the death, transformation and rebirth of the king frequently serves as an allegory for
the magnum opus (Section 3).428 The death of the king instigates or corresponds to the
decomposition of the base material during the nigredo, where the prima materia undergoes
putrefaction (in wet processes) or calcination (in dry ones) to yield a black massa confusa
(“confused mass”).429 The breakdown of pre-existing structure is a necessary prerequisite to
embarking on the path to renewal and regeneration.430 During the subsequent
transformations, the albedo is often presented as a White Queen who then gives way to the
Red King of the rubedo,431 with the perfection of the final product represented by a fusion or
“chymical wedding” of the two (Fig. 69).432 This coniunctio oppositorum is commonly
visualised as the emergence of the “Hermetic hermaphrodite” or “Mercurial androgyne,”433
which is also known as Rebis (“Double Matter”) (Fig. 70). The conjunction may be depicted
as occurring under a rainbow, as in the 6th Key in the 17th-century Twelve Keys of Basil
Valentine (Fig. 71). The two-in-one nature of Rebis (Figs. 69-70) seems to be anticipated in
the Hymn of the Pearl, which we encountered in Section 5. Specifically, when Thomas sees
the rainbow-coloured cloak of gnosis, he is astonished:434
As I gazed on it, suddenly the garment
like a mirror reflected me,
and I saw myself apart
as two entities in one form.
The treasurers had brought me one robe,
yet in two halves I saw one shape
with one kingly seal.

In some ways, the alchemical coniunctio is analogous to the crucial fusion of Re with
Osiris during the sun-god’s nocturnal journey,435 when the two unite to become “the one

68
Fig. 69. Fusion of the solar Red King and lunar White Queen at the end of the alchemical
magnum opus; the resulting Hermetic androgyne stands above a dragon, which represents the
vanquished prima materia.436 Miniature from a 17th-century German manuscript titled Dritter
Pitagorischer Sinodas von der verborgenen Weisheit. Photo: World History Archive / Alamy
Stock Photo.437

69
Fig. 70. Rebis from Heinrich Nollius (1617) Theoria Philosophiae Hermeticae, also 6th woodcut from the series
in Basil Valentine’s Azoth.438 Photo: Charles Walker Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.439

70
Fig. 71. The 6th Key of the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, engraved by Matthaeus Merian, from the 1678
collection Musaeum Hermeticum, Reformatum et Amplificatum, Apud Hermannum à Sande, Frankfurt. The
coniunctio or “chymical wedding” of the Red King and White Queen takes place under a rainbow; their union as
Rebis (which is never explicitly shown in this work) is prefigured by the Janus-headed vessel being heated on the
fire. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons;440 digitally hand-coloured by the author.441

who has two Bas” (bA.wy=fy).442 Andreas Schweizer – a Jungian psychologist – recognised
this in 1994, when he framed the union of Re with Osiris as a “mysterium coniunctionis, the
mysterious union of the opposites, the same great mystery for which the alchemists searched
over the centuries in their attempts to produce their philosophical gold.”443 This is indeed a
fusion of opposites, given that Re represents light, life and nHH (cyclical eternity, or unending
recurrence) while Osiris represents darkness, death and D.t (linear eternity, or atemporal
unchangingness).444 Jung’s own description of the alchemical magnum opus reads:445
The alchemical operation consisted essentially in separating the prima materia, the so-called
chaos, into the active principle, the soul, and the passive principle, the body, which were then
reunited in personified form in the coniunctio or “chymical marriage.” In other words, the
coniunctio was allegorised as the hierosgamos [= marriage of the gods]…
Although Jung was unaware of it, his description is directly compatible with the Egyptian
coniunctio in which Re – the mobile Ba-soul of Osiris446 – unites with the stationary body of
Osiris in the sixth hour of the night; this conjunction can equally be expressed as the
peripatetic sun-god Re (= active, soul) uniting with his mummified corpse (= passive, body),
which is hidden in the depths of the Netherworld.447 It is even possible to view the union of

71
Re with Osiris in sexual terms,448 akin to the alchemical union of the Red King and White
Queen. Moreover, the over-arching principle of the Egyptian solar cycle conforms to the
techne of alchemy, since in both “the cosmic energies must be brought down to earth and
raised up again.”449 Like an endless alchemical process, the sun-god “eternally rises into the
air up to the heavens then descends again to the earth, its basin. This continuous circulation,
the harmonisation of the spirit and the material, the embodiment of spirit [cf. Re uniting with
his corpse] and the spiritualisation of matter [cf. the concomitant re-energising of Osiris], is
the goal of alchemy.”450

Interestingly, the division of the sun-god’s nocturnal journey into twelve hours in the
Amduat and Book of Gates is paralleled by the structure of George Ripley’s 16th-century
Compound of Alchemy, a work “in verse which describes the alchemical process as
undergoing twelve stages or ‘Gates.’”451 Likewise, each “key” of the early 17th -century
Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine corresponds to one alchemical step in a twelve-step process;
the mid-point or 6th Key is represented by the coniunctio of the Red King and White Queen
(Fig. 71),452 just as the 6th hours of the Amduat and Book of Gates see “As ba and corpse, Re
and Osiris unite at the deepest point in the nocturnal journey” (Fig. 64) to become bA.wy=fy,
the one with two Bas (Fig. 72).453 Elsewhere, the Ba of Re and the Ba of Osiris are both
represented by the benu bird, i.e. the Egyptian phoenix (Fig. 73),454 so it is only fitting that
the phoenix is also the animal emblem of the perfection that is realised at the end of the
alchemical magnum opus (Fig. 74).455 The aforementioned bA.wy=fy (“His two Bas”) of
Re/Osiris invites comparison with the hr.wy=fy (“His two faces”) of Horus/Seth, which we
will meet in the next section, because both represent hard-won fusions of complementary
opposites; indeed, for CT 315, one coffin actually names the two Bas of bA.wy=fy as Horus
and Seth.456 The theme of the alchemical Rebis will be reprised towards the end of Section
10, where images of Rebis will be juxtaposed with depictions of “His two faces.”

10. Unexpected duality: Two sexes, two heads

Perhaps as an internal manifestation of category reversal, which we saw could include a

change of sex, rainbows and their serpent-dragon avatars are often perceived as dual
gendered within any particular culture.457 In view of this, it may be relevant to recall the
Pyramid Texts’ use of “Great One” in connection with rainbows, with that term being given
in both a feminine (PT 333) and masculine form (PT 570). Dragon traits are distributed
across a range of Egyptian divine/demonic entities, both male and female, but usually without
both sexes co-existing in any one embodiment. It is interesting to note that – with the
exception of Henepet-2 from the Temple of Edfu458 – all of the malevolent/punishing
“dragons” in Table 1 are male, while – with the exception of Ammut (Section 6) – all of the
female ones are helpful or protective, usually the latter. Little is known about Henepet-2; she
is one of two female snakes named Henepet in the Temple of Edfu,459 the other one being
beneficent; she may be cognate with either the red or white snake of the same name in P.
Brooklyn 47.218.48.460 Of course, the protective nature of the Netherworld’s minimally-
characterised female serpents can overlap with other activities, especially the punishment of
malefactors; for example, in the lowest register of the 9th Hour of the Amduat, twelve fire-
spitting cobra goddesses guard piles of new clothing (protective), illuminate the darkness

72
Fig. 72. The united Re-Osiris, mummiform in body like Osiris but with the ram-head of Atum and the solar disc
of Re, flanked by Nephthys (left) and Isis (right), as depicted in the tomb of Nefertari (QV 66). The captions read
“It is Osiris who sets as Re” (left) and “It is Re who sets as Osiris” (right).461 Thom Cavalli says of this image that
“the painting represents one of the earliest images to visualize an alchemical coniunctio, variations of which
evolved over time; one of the most eloquent is found much later in a 16th-century C.E. alchemical manuscript
called the Rosarium Philosophorum.”462 Unfortunately, Cavalli nominates (and reproduces as a figure)463 Emblem
2 from the Rosarium, whereas the Conjunction does not occur until Emblem 5.464 Photo: Author.

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Fig. 73. The benu-bird or ancient Egyptian phoenix, here shown at the prow of the funerary/solar
barque wearing an atef crown; from the 19th-Dynasty tomb of Senedjem at Deir el-Medina.
Photo: Author.

74
Fig. 74. The European phoenix, surrounded by the fire from which it regenerates; note the approximation of the
crest to a crown (and compare with Fig. 73). Miniature from f. 083v of the mid-14th-century Dutch manuscript
Der Naturen Bloeme by Jacob van Maerlant; Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, cat. KB KA 16. Photo: Public
Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.465

(helpful), but also, from “the flame of their mouth which causes slaughter in the Netherworld
[…] they live on the blood of those whom they behead day after day” (punitive).466 The
accompanying illustration, however, shows only their protective aspect (spiting fire while
seated on the hieroglyph for clothing, in the absence of enemies or victims).

In some countries, rainbow serpents are also considered to be bicephalic, with a head at
each end of their bodies. Although this feature is mainly known from the Far East and North
and South America,467 there are candidates amongst the Netherworld snakes of the Egyptian
religious literature. One of the earliest is a “mother snake” of Northwest Semitic origin that
features in the Pyramid Texts; spells invoking the protection of this serpent – recorded in
Proto-Canaanite that has been written phonetically using Egyptian hieroglyphs468 – are
included in PT 232-238 and 281-287.469 Her original name would have been Rīr-Rīr, but in
Old Egyptian it was rendered AAA.470 In the New Kingdom, her body-shape may be

75
remembered in the various double-headed Netherworld snakes.471 She has a particularly
likely successor in Hekenet (Hkn.t, “She Who Adores”),472 a female snake in the 4th Hour of
the Amduat who protects a route through the Imhet necropolis.473 The Amduat text says: “She
is like this as the guardian of this path. She praises with her two faces the great image which
is in it,”474 an expression which mirrors the attribute of the serpent in PT 234 – presumed to
be Rīr-Rīr – who “jubilates with both of her faces.”475 The Amduat’s illustration of Hekenet
shows a snake with “a second head facing backwards planted on its tail, an anthropomorphic
head with the beard of a god” (Fig. 75).476 Rīr-Rīr seems to be purely female, so the
combination presented by Hekenet constitutes a rare Egyptian example of a dual-gendered
chimera. Hekenet’s name, however, indicates that she is considered to be female, so she may
not really be an exception to the generalisation about gender segregation made in the previous
paragraph.

In PT 235, the two-headed Rīr-Rīr guards the threshold of the door to the king’s burial
chamber,477 just as a rainbow serpent would guard its watery domain against unauthorised
entry. Moreover, Rīr-Rīr – who is also connected with water478 – is designated as the mother
of all snakes.479 That an ancient Near Eastern connection to the rainbow may lurk behind Rīr-
Rīr’s proto-Canaanite epithet ʾimmu-ḥiwwi, “mother snake (lit., snake’s mother),” is hinted at
in the following passage:480
Another important parallel to ʾimmu-ḥiwwi is Sumerian dama-ušum, a name applied to Dumuzi
by Inana in Sumerian love songs. The name is composed of two well-known Sumerian words,
ama “mother” and ušum “snake.” The fullest form of the name is dama-ušum-gal-an-na, in
which the final components are gal “great” (or ušumgal “great snake, dragon”) and an-na “of
heaven.” It is attested already in the Fara period. The mythological background of the name is
unknown, but it is believed to have originally belonged to a deity distinct from Dumuzi. It is
impossible to prove that the expressions ʾimmu-ḥiwwi and dama-ušum(-gal-an-na) have a
common origin, but if they do we are dealing with an extremely ancient concept, whose
Sumerian reflex would mean “(great) mother-snake (of heaven).”
The underlying archaic concept could be that the rainbow is the mother of all terrestrial
snakes. In much the same way, the Feranmin of New Guinea believe that “Magalim is a
single ‘father’ representing the Rainbow Serpent in its totality, while ‘His children are the

Fig. 75. Hekenet (Hkn.t, “She Who Adores”), a female snake with a rear-facing male head near its tail, who protects
a route in the 4th Hour of the Amduat; here shown as depicted in the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

76
magalim associated with specific localities. Descendants at still further remove are the
various snakes known in the area, each displaying some special characteristics of
Magalim.’”481

One must wonder whether there is any linguistic connection between the name of Rīr-Rīr
and that of the Apophis-like serpent Rerek (rrk), which is targeted in spells from the Coffin
Texts and the Book of the Dead.482 Richard Steiner explains that Rīr “is based on the Semitic
noun *rīrum ‘spittle’ attested in Hebrew and Aramaic as rīr and in Arabic as rayrun. It is no
doubt used here of venom,”483 the term Rīr being duplicated on account of the snake’s two
heads.484 It is therefore interesting to note that CT 369, the prototype of BD 33, calls the rrk-
snake “rr,” a variant which (unlike rrk) survives in the late Snake Manual.485 Steiner has
already raised the possibility of an origin for the Egyptian rr-snake’s name in the Hebrew-
Aramaic rīr.486

In the 4th Hour of the Book of Gates, one encounters a giant female snake whose name –
Hiririet (Hrr.t)487 – also seems to recapitulate rīr. She lives in the middle of a lake (Fig. 76).
Like Ankh-Netjeru (Section 9), she is a time-snake; like Rīr-Rīr, she is also a mother of
snakes because “she gives birth to twelve serpents, which she destroys and which she
swallows afterwards, the hours.”488 The Egyptian word Hrr.t means a worm or other small
crawling or creeping creature,489 so this name probably refers to the mother’s twelve
neonates. Sometimes her name is given with a causative prefix as sHrr.t,490 which means “the
removing one” or “the one who takes away,”491 which seems to emphasise the manner in
which she deals with her offspring.492

In the Old Kingdom, the Mehen board game (Section 9) often showed Mehen with his
snake-head in the centre of the tight radial coil formed by his body, but with an additional
duck-like head at the other end of his body (Figs. 60 & 77).493 In the Middle Kingdom, a
vignette accompanying CT 758 shows Re – or, more likely, Re-Osiris from the end of the
world in CT 1130494 – in the centre of the concentric rings of Mehen, where he wears an atef-
like crown;495 “The brim of the crown is formed by a serpent with a head at both ends of its
body, probably to be understood as Mehen.”496 In the New Kingdom, BD 172 refers to the

Fig. 76. The female time-snake Hrr.t or sHrr.t within the deep centre of her lake in the 4th Hour of the Book of
Gates, flanked by the twelve hours shown as divine females, as depicted in the tomb of Rameses IV (KV 2).
Photo: Author.

77
Fig. 77. Mehen game, 5-6th Dynasty; note the snake-head at centre of the coil and the duck-head on the outside,
at lower left of image; Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden. Photo: Rob Koopman, via Wikimedia Commons.497

“heads of Mehen,” suggesting that this snake-god was bicephalic.498 Mehen may therefore
underpin the depictions of the solar barque (within which he later appears as a crew member)
as a double-headed serpent in the 4th and 5th Hours of the Amduat (Fig. 78).499 Much later, the
Roman grammarian Macrobius described Janus – the quintessential two-faced god of
European mythology – as an ouroboros-like snake swallowing its own tail,500 which suggests
a persistent memory of Mehen as a serpent with two heads facing in opposite directions.

In ancient Egypt, Mehen’s two-headed aspect seems to have gone underground as a “secret
form” of the god. As Peter Piccione writes:501
The Book of Gates, Tenth [→Eleventh]502 Division, depicts six uraei seated on two bows;
standing between them is an anthropomorphic deity with two heads, those of Horus and Seth.
The figure is named, MHn pj n iarw.(t) Hrwy.fy, “It is Mehen of the Uraei – His Two Faces,”
and he occurs in a group of scenes that describes the regeneration of the sun god as a child. The
accompanying text says: MHn pw n iarw.t xns.f dwA.t / Smrw.t rmn.sn Hrwy.f(y) m StA.f “It is
Mehen of the Uraei, he travels through the netherworld. The bows, they lift up His Two Faces
as his mystery.” Thus, the figure depicts the god Mehen, in whom the conceptualization with
two heads clearly appears as a secret form (m StA.f). […]
Significantly, the two-headed Mehen is associated with the regenerative principle, since both
the Book of Day and the Book of Gates, Tenth [→Eleventh] Division, relate the double-headed
aspect of Mehen specifically to the birth of Ra. […]

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Fig. 78. The solar barque as a double-headed serpent in the 4th Hour of the Amduat, as depicted in the tomb of
Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

By the new Kingdom, […] the memory of the mHn-game was associated with the mysterious
two-headed aspect of Mehen that was otherwise related to the birth of the sun god. This aspect
of his was not generally promulgated but was kept m StA.f, “as his secret,” i.e., only for those
who were in the know, and it was thus, perhaps, part of the “mysteries of Mehen.”
It is bizarre that, in this 11th Hour scene from the Book of Gates, the uraei and the two-faced
figure are shown perched upon the draw-strings of two archery bows (Fig. 79);503 even after
allowing for the aspective nature of Egyptian art,504 the scene is so absurd as to suggest a
hidden meaning or play on words.505 One must wonder if the secret allusion here is not to a
different kind of bow (or double bow) that can magically accompany the reappearance of the
sun-god after bad weather and that seems simultaneously to face in opposite directions – i.e.
the rainbow. As the Book of Gates says: “This is the Mehen of the Uraeus-serpents, he
traverses the Netherworld. The bows, they carry ‘His-two-faces’ as his (Re’s)506 mystery. It is
they who announce Re in the eastern horizon of heaven. They travel in the sky after him.”507

Mention of the dawn could refer to the fact that – as noted in Section 3 – a rainbow-like
temporal colour progression occurs each day on the eastern horizon caused by “refraction of
light which causes the eye to first perceive blue-green, then red at sunrise, and the opposite at
sunset” in the west.508 In the Book of the Day, “Mehen is depicted as a circular two-headed
uraeus – similar to an ouroboros – coiled around the newborn sun god, whom Isis and
Nephthys lift up and transfer to the day-bark.”509 Robert Blust has speculated that the origin
of the ouroboros (Fig. 80), which later became important in Byzantine, Arabic and European
alchemy as a symbol of the circumfluent ocean of chaos, of eternity and of the oneness of

79
Fig. 79. Mehen of the Uraeus-serpents, from the 11th Hour of the Book of Gates in the tomb of Rameses VI (KV
9). “His Two Faces” is the standing figure flanked by cobras; the left-facing head510 – that of Seth – has been
specifically erased, leaving a crater in the plaster behind the right-facing head, that of Horus. (The complete head
of the same figure from the upper panel of Fig. 83 is inset at top left.) The standing figure and flanking uraei are
all shown balanced on the draw-strings of two horizontal archery bows. To the left of the Mehen group appear
several adoring goddesses, “Those who call,” who encourage Re to set foot into the sky.511 Photo: Author.

being (Fig. 81),512 might lie in the observation of circular rainbow-like phenomena (Fig. 82)
by ancient Egyptian priests.513 Equally, a full conventional rainbow looks like the visible
upper half of a circle that continues invisibly underground, completing its course in the
Netherworld in the same manner as the cosmic waterway was believed to do.514 It would not
be difficult to imagine a smaller version wrapped around the sun-disk as the cause of the
horizon’s colour sequence at sunrise and sunset.515

The other representation of “His Two Faces” in the Book of Gates seems to hint at a
conventional rainbow. This occurs in the 10th Hour,516 where – with outstretched arms – he
stands on the back of a double-headed sphinx (Fig. 83, upper). The double-headed sphinx is
called “Horus who is in the boat,” which suggests that Mehen cannot be far away. However, a
two-headed sphinx is usually a personification of the horizon,517 so the pose of “His Two
Faces” suggests that he spans the whole field of view. Like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian

80
Fig. 80. Mehen as ouroboros, surrounding the head of a giant divine figure (probably Re-Osiris; cf. Fig. 72) in
the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, as portrayed on the second gilded shrine of Tutankhamun (KV 62);518
Egyptian Museum, Cairo. A second circular Mehen (not shown) surrounds the divine figure’s feet; the compos-
ition as a whole refers to the creation and end of time.519 This is the earliest Egyptian representation of the
ouroboros,520 and thus the prototype of the motif that became so prominent in European alchemy. Photo: Author.

81
Fig. 81. An ouroboros from a late medieval Byzantine Greek alchemical manuscript, ca. 1478.
Codex Parisinus graecus 2327, f. 279. Photo: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.521

Fig. 82. A solar glory surrounding a “Brocken spectre,” actually the highly magnified
shadow of the photographer projected into the mist/fog/cloud. Photo: Brocken
Inaglory, via Wikimedia Commons.522

82
Fig. 83. Upper panel: “His Two Faces” standing on the back of the double-headed sphinx in the 10th Hour of
the Book of Gates,523 as seen in the tomb of Queen Tawseret (KV 14). Photo: Author. Lower panel: The
alchemical Rebis standing on the back of a double-headed dragon,524 from the John Rylands Library
(Manchester), German MS 1: Alchemica, a 15th century German manuscript, 4v. Photo: John Rylands Library.525

83
Man, raising his arms upward would cause his fingertips to trace out an arc in the sky, as they
begin to do in the subsequent 11th Hour (Fig. 79). All that is missing is the rainbow itself; by
way of a thought experiment, this has been supplied digitally in Fig. 84. Interestingly, Paul
Frandsen likens “His Two Faces” to Iaau, the morally contradictory entity with rainbow-like
characteristics that we encountered in Section 3: “Iaau is an ambiguous being. Comparable to
the being with a Janus face in the shape of Horus and Seth, Iaau became two, embodying

Fig. 84. The secret of Mehen? “His Two Faces” standing atop Mehen of the Uraeus-serpents, as in Fig. 79; in this
case, however, the caption has been digitally erased, Seth’s head has been digitally restored, and the composition
has been augmented with a digitally-added rainbow. Photo: Author.

84
latent, creative existence as well as non-existence.”526 The comparison may have been
motivated in part by the fact that, for PT 249 (§264a), “Sethe identifies Iaau as being two
fighters [… while] Faulkner identifies these two quarrelers with Horus and Seth.”527

In the composite figure of “His Two Faces,” which combines the opposing natures of
Horus and Seth,528 we encounter an early form of what in the European alchemical tradition
became known as Rebis (“Double Matter”), the conjunction of opposites that constitutes the
perfection achieved after rubedo,529 at the end of the alchemical magnum opus (“Great
Work,” Sections 3 & 9). Robert Blust explains that:
Here, as stressed by a few writers, like Jung (1968, 1970), the dragon played a symbolic role in
portraying the philosophical concept of the conjunction of opposites. […] This dual gender is
sometimes visually represented as a single body that is human at the top and serpentine at the
bottom, and – more to the point – male on the right side and female on the left side facing
forward.
As we saw in the previous section, compositions more commonly show a human Rebis
standing on the back of a dragon (Figs. 69 & 70).530 Moreover, the dragon itself often has two
or more heads facing in opposite directions (e.g. Fig. 85),531 much as Mehen’s two sets of
uraei face away from each other in Fig. 79. Indeed, the cognate image of “His Two Faces”
standing on the back of the double-headed sphinx in the 10th Hour of the Book of Gates seems
to anticipate by millennia the alchemical Rebis standing on the back of the double-headed
dragon (Fig. 83).532

Connections between ancient Egyptian religion and Western alchemy are explored in
detail by Andreas Schweizer in his 2010 book The Sungod’s Journey Through the
Netherworld 533 and by Alison Roberts in her 2019 book Hathor’s Alchemy,534 but the
similarity between “His Two Faces” and Rebis escapes mention; equally, it seems to be
overlooked in investigations of the same intellectual terrain by others. Detailed examination
reveals some additional correspondences, whose exposition warrants a few sentences. We
have already seen in Section 9 that the nigredo phase of the magnum opus requires the death
of the chaotic prima materia, which is often symbolised by an aggressive dragon;535 as the
poem about the fiery chaos-dragon in the Ripley Scroll (Fig. 57) says of this phase, “thus
with craft the serpent is slain.”536 At the end of the process, the triumphant emergence is that
of Rebis (Section 9), who dominates and is supported by a dragon of the two-headed (Figs.
83 & 85) or circular type (Fig. 86),537 a symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone which – like the
primeval mound of Egyptian cosmogony (Section 3)538 – represented for the alchemists “the
formation of a solid ground within the shifting sea of their inner world.”539 It is only fitting
that the Egyptian antecedent of this Rebis should have combined the forces of Horus and
Seth, the two preeminent dragon-fighters of the Egyptian pantheon (Figs. 38-40 & 49-51).

11. Expected duality: Two wings, two legs

Appendages that occur in pairs as a matter of necessity should not be neglected in our survey,
and wings are an obvious example. The dragons of most cultures can fly,540 but since the
cosmographies of many civilisations – including that of ancient Egypt – envisaged the sky as
a waterway, celestial activity was a foregone conclusion for dragons as it was merely an
extension of their innate association with water (Section 1). Of course, this ability could be
reinforced and made more obvious by ensuring that dragons could rise into the air like birds,
and winged serpents are indeed common in ancient Egyptian funerary art. Wadjet, the

85
Fig. 85. The alchemical Rebis standing atop a double-headed dragon, from the John Rylands Library
(Manchester), German MS 1: Alchemica, a 15th century German manuscript, 5r. The left half holds a radially
coiled serpent which is reminiscent of the tightly-wound Mehen game board (left inset),541 while the right half
holds a chalice from which emerge three snake-heads, reminiscent of “Mehen of the Uraeus-serpents” in Fig. 79
(right inset). Base photo: John Rylands Library.542

86
Fig. 86. The alchemical Rebis standing on the back of a multi-headed dragon in circular configuration; title
illustration from De alchimia opuscula complura veterum philosophorum (more commonly known as the
Rosarium philosophorum), Frankfurt, 1550. The image is Emblem 17 in the work’s transformative sequence of
20 emblems, where it is captioned “The showing of perfection.”543 Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript
Library, Yale University, via Wikimedia Commons.544

87
already-mentioned cobra-goddess of Lower Egypt, is often depicted with a pair of wings
(Figs. 87 & 88).545 Meretseger, too, can appear in the form of a winged cobra (Fig. 89).546 A
winged serpent called Seshemyt (sSm.yt), “She who leads/guides,” flies upward in the 11th

Fig. 87. Two representations of Wadjet as a winged cobra on the columns in the forecourt of the temple of Sobek
and Horus at Kom Ombo. Photo: Author.

Fig. 88. Wadjet as a winged cobra on the underside of a lintel at the temple of Sobek and Horus at Kom Ombo.
Photo: Author.

88
Fig. 89. Meretseger as a winged cobra, flanking a staircase in the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9).
Photo: Author.

89
Hour of the Book of Gates (Fig. 90), prefiguring the dawn ascent of the sun-god.547 In the 4th
Hour of the Amduat, a Netherworld snake-deity is shown with a pair of wings as well as three
frontal heads (Fig. 91);548 in the tomb of Rameses VI, this entity is identified as Nehebukau
(Fig. 92).549 In the 5th Hour of the Amduat, a winged three-headed snake – which has a fourth
rear-facing head of a male god as its tail – is gripped by Sokar (Fig. 93). Called “the great

Fig. 90. Seshemyt (sSm.yt), “She who leads/guides,” flies upward in the 11th Hour of the Book
of Gates, depicted in an antechamber of the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

Fig. 91. “The great god” who “lives from the breath of his two wings – his corpse and the heads”550 in the 4th Hour
of the Amduat, from the tomb of Seti I (KV 17). Photo: kairoinfo4u, via Flickr.551

90
Fig. 92. The winged and multi-headed snake-deity shown in the previous figure (Fig. 91) is identified as Nehebu-
kau in the tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

Fig. 93. “The great god, who spreads his wings with multicolour plumes” is gripped by Sokar within his oval
enclosure in the 5th Hour of the Amduat; here shown as depicted in the tomb of Ramses III (KV 11). Photo: Author.

god, who spreads his wings with multicolour plumes,” the serpent has variously been
interpreted as a form of the sun-god, another embodiment of Sokar, or a portion of the
primeval chaos;552 its stated task is to guard its own image.553 The inscription accompanying
the so-called Basilisk in the 26-27th Dynasty tomb of Iufaa (Iufaa snake-deity II, “Bsk” in
Table 1) tells us that “his wings are 4 like (those of) a locust.”554 The locust comparison
relates to the number of wings – locusts do indeed have four wings – rather than to their
nature, since the illustration clearly shows that the creature possesses feathered avian wings
rather than membranous insect-like ones (Fig. 94). On a related note, the Egyptian penchant
for equipping scarab beetles with bird wings (or with a mammalian attribute, such as a ram’s

91
Fig. 94. Sketch of so-called Basilisk from the 26-27th Dynasty tomb of Iufaa at Abusir (Iufaa snake-deity II = Bsk,
Table 1).555

head) results in a chimera which is technically a dragon, since it combines parts of cold- and
warm-blooded animals. An example which grafts both bird-wings and a ram’s head onto a
scarab’s body is shown in Fig. 95.

Fig. 95. Bird-winged and ram-headed scarab from the lid of the Third Intermediate Period coffin of Nesikhonsu,
wife of Pinudjem II, usurped from Isetemkheb. Egyptian Museum, Cairo, CG 61030a.2. Photo: Author (while on
loan to Australian Museum, Sydney).

92
 Legs also necessarily occur in pairs. European, near Eastern and east Asian dragons
typically have animal legs, often reptilian and/or prominently clawed (Figs. 3, 4, 26 & 27),
but Egyptian snake-hybrids with legs usually stand upon human feet; the Sa-Ta snake (= sA
tA, “son of the earth” = Saito in older literature) mentioned in PT 395 and 727 and in BD 87 is
so illustrated in the Papyrus of Ani (Fig. 96),556 and the same is true of Nehebukhau and other
Netherworld snake deities/demons (Fig. 92; also Fig. 78, at top left of scene). Likewise, the
therioanthropomorphic forms of Sobek and Renenutet stand on two human legs (Fig. 97 &
98), while Ammut possesses four mammalian legs (Figs. 36 & 37). It is for these reasons that,
for the first two columns of Table 1, the two- and four-legged trait is shown as a warm-
blooded one.

Some chimerae appear to have more than four legs; for the Basilisk in the tomb of Iufaa
(Iufaa snake-deity II), the inscription says that “He has 4 legs and 4 arms,”557 but the
illustration shows him standing on all eight limbs (Fig. 94).558

Fig. 96. Vignette of the Sa-Ta (“son of the earth”) snake accompanying Spell 87 in the Book of the Dead,
from sheet 27 of the 19th Dynasty Papyrus of Ani.559 British Museum, EA10470,27. Seemingly hostile
in the Old Kingdom (PT 727); in the New Kingdom the deceased identifies with this snake, which is
“reborn, renewed and rejuvenated every day.”560 Photo: Yellowbluegreen, via Wikimedia Commons.561

93
 Fig. 98. One of a pair of cobra-headed
goddesses, possibly depicting Renenutet,562
Late to Ptolemaic Period; Saqqara 20080-
20081, Sharm el Sheik Museum. Photo:
Author (while on loan to Australian Mus-
eum, Sydney).

Fig. 97. The god Sobek as a crocodile-human chimera, from a

relief in the temple of Sobek and Horus at Kom Ombo. Photo:
Author.

94
12. Consumption or consummation?
In a duality of a different kind, dragons typically pose two types of threat to young women:
the danger of being eaten alive as a meal (as attested in European legends),563 and the danger
of sexual violation and impregnation (as attested in European, Chinese and North American
myths).564

The crocodile-god Sobek (whom we have already encountered in CT 160 and its cognate,
BD 108; Section 5) is often shown with a crocodile’s head atop a man’s body (Fig. 97) – a
composite of cold- and warm-blooded attributes that technically qualifies him as a dragon.
Interestingly, Sobek does harbour some dragon-like traits in the Pyramid Texts. This is
especially true of the danger that he poses to young women, whom he regards both as a
source of food and of sexual gratification. The danger of being eaten simply reflects the real-
world habits of the crocodile as the Nile’s apex predator, while the sexual dimension – which
has prompted the suggestion that his name derives from s:bkA, “to cause to be pregnant” –
may encode Sobek’s association with the river and the agricultural fertility that it brings.565
The unusual nexus of traits is most clearly expressed in PT 317, whose initial juxtaposition of
water and sunlight may even hint at the rainbow as a “Great One” from which Sobek
emerged:566
PT 317 (§507 & 510): I have come today from out the waters of the flood; I am Sobek, green
of plume, watchful of face, raised of brow, the raging one who came forth from the shank and
tail of the Great One who is in the sunshine. […] I eat with my mouth, I urinate and copulate
with my phallus, I am the lord of semen who takes women from their husbands whenever he
wishes, according to his desire.
In this passage, the “Great One” is feminine. One is of course reminded of the feminine
“Great One” encountered earlier in PT 333, where the referent was most likely a rainbow
(Section 3). If, on the other hand, the current use of wr.t denotes a goddess,567 the most likely
referent is Neith, a procreative creatrix who – later in PT 317 – is named as the mother of
Sobek.568 Neith, “the Mistress of the Bow,”569 has as her hieroglyph Gardiner sign R24, an
emblem understood to show “two bows tied in a package” (Fig. 55 & 99).570 Given the
archery-bow / rainbow equivalence in the Egyptian language,571 as discussed earlier (Section
3), it is interesting to note that, in terms of global ethnology, the double rainbow is widely
understood to be a procreative couple.572 Of further interest is another previously mentioned
fact, namely that Neith was not just the mother of Sobek but was later credited with creating
the malevolent dragon Apophis (Section 5). Since Neith’s other rainbow-like traits include a
warlike aspect (Table 1), winged-serpent avatar (Fig. 100), ability to spit fire, androgynous
nature and links with both water and the primeval mound,573 one could try to connect both
Sobek and Apophis with the rainbow via their relationship with Neith and her bows, but the
chain of inference is really too strained to be credible.574

For a serpentine Egyptian dragon preying on young women, we have to wait for the
Coptic folktale of “Mari Girgis and the Beast.”575 In this story, the dragon that controls the
Nile flood demands the annual sacrifice of a female virgin and can only be vanquished by St.
George (= Mari Girgis; Fig. 101).576 Modern-day Egyptian folk festivals include one which –
prior to construction of the dams – celebrated the annual rise of the Nile (‘Aeed wafā’ el-
neel). During this festival, a wooden doll dressed in bridal clothes is thrown into the river;
Hasan el-Shamy notes that “The modern folk practice seems to be a survival from ancient

95
Fig. 99. Neith, with her hieroglyph (consisting of two bows in a package) as a caption over her head; tomb of
Khaemwaset (QV 44). Photo: Author.

96
Fig. 100. Neith as a winged cobra, flanking the staircase below the four-pillared chamber in the tomb of Rameses
VI (KV 9). Photo: Author.

rituals in which an actual human sacrifice was made.”577 The following version of the Mari
Girgis legend was collected orally in 1970:578
A huge serpent lived near a village. It threatened the people of this particular village. They had
to give him a virgin maiden every year, or he would throw himself into the “sea” [i.e., the Nile]
and prevent water from reaching the village. At the same time, he horrified the village, for he
was awesome, and his body was huge. Naturally, every year the people chose one of the village
maidens to be the sacrifice for the serpent.
One year the daughter of the king himself was drawn by lot; it was her turn for the serpent to
get her. The king became very sad, for he had no other children but her; she was his only child.
When his daughter was chosen he was very distressed, for she had to be offered to this dragon
(of course “dragon” means a huge serpent), and she was going to die, but he could not say no.
On the appointed day, the girl was dressed in a bridal gown, all white and adorned with jewels,
and taken to the Nile, to that river. Of course there were music and drums and pipe sounds and
a large crowd of people. When they reached the bank, they left the daughter of the king there
for the serpent to come and take her away.
It chanced that Mari Girgis was passing by; God had sent him to save the girl. He saw the girl
sitting on the bank waiting. He got off his horse and asked her, “What are you doing here?”
She told him the story and asked him to go away, so that the serpent would not devour him also.
He said to her, “Do not be afraid. I will rid you of it.”

97
Fig. 101. Icon of St. George (Mari Girgis) spearing the dragon, Old Church of St. George, Mit Damsis, Egypt.
Photo: Roland Unger, via Wikimedia Commons,579 with colour balance corrections by Topaz Photo AI 2.

98
 A while later the water of the Nile boiled and became very turbulent. It parted and there was
the serpent! Mari Girgis, very composed, drew his sword out of his scabbard and waited. Of
course the beast thought, “What is this little thing?”
It kept on coming toward them. When it was very close, Mari Girgis struck it once and didn’t
need to strike again. The beast became a heap of meat at his feet.
He made the girl carry the serpent (they say); it was a horrible serpent, and they went through
the town. Of course everybody was hiding in his house with his door locked. They were all
afraid. When they saw them coming, they ran out in the streets and rejoiced. The king wanted
to give his daughter in marriage to Mari Girgis and give him his kingdom, but Mari Girgis did
not accept. Because for us [Copts], saints do not marry; they don’t have worldly desires.
The dressing of the girl in a bridal gown and her finest jewelry for the ceremony in which she
would be sacrificed to the dragon reinforces the dual nature of the threat that dragons
typically pose to young women: the danger of sexual congress, and the danger of being eaten
alive.

Interestingly, a legend similar to the Coptic one was recorded during the 19th century in the
Senegambia region of west Africa. In this story:580
The prosperity of the country depended on the sacrifice of the most beautiful and accomplished
girl to a snake monster. On one occasion the victim had been led to the water hole where the
serpent was wont to appear, for it was his custom to drag the sacrifice under the water. At the
critical moment, when the sad fate of the girl seemed inevitable, a youth dashed up on horseback
and claimed the girl for himself after cutting the snake monster in two.
This story is reported as indigenous, but its striking similarity to the hagiographic miracles of
Christian saints makes one suspicious that it might be the naturalised version of a missionary
import, or include at least some influences from European folktales.

13. Discussion and conclusions

Given the status of the rainbow-serpent-dragon nexus as a culture universal, it is likely that
there was originally a native Egyptian conception of rainbows as snake-like supernatural
creatures which were both revered and feared. Their origin in sunlight and water meant that
they were probably – for the most part – viewed positively and considered sources of
protection and life. Such ideas could have given rise to some of the numerous protective
snake-deities in the ancient Egyptian pantheon; Wadjet and Mehen, for example, are well
attested during the Old Kingdom and thereafter.581

By the time of the Old Kingdom, any archaic identification of rainbows as autonomous
serpents/dragons seems to have been superseded by an alternative view – one better aligned
with the nation’s solar cult – which regarded the celestial rainbow (and its time-resolved
equivalent on the horizon at dawn) as a triumphant epiphany of the sun-god’s creative power,
a symbol of the victory of light over darkness, and a stairway to heaven. These awe-inspiring
divine “Appearances” were recapitulated by the king’s own appearances in glory: his
accession, coronation, entry into battle, and so on. In a sense, Egypt’s appropriation of the
majestic rainbow as an element of royal ideology parallels China’s appropriation of the
mighty rainbow-derived dragon as the personal emblem of the emperor.582 And, just as
occurred in the Judeo-Christian realm with the revisionist message of Gen 9:12-15 – i.e. the
episode in which Yahweh recast the rainbow as the token of his promise never to repeat the
Flood583 – Egypt’s royal reframing would largely have divorced any indigenous dragon-like
creatures from their rainbow origins.

99
 There is no word for “dragon” in Old, Middle or Late Egyptian. Instead, dragon traits in
Egypt are distributed across a range of mythological creatures which exist alongside each
other without clearly belonging to the same category. Few Egyptologists would
spontaneously assign Narmer’s serpopards, Wadjet, Mehen, the Shipwrecked Sailor’s snake-
deity, Apophis and Ammut to the same mythological genus,584 and presumably even fewer
ancient Egyptians would have thought in such terms. As befits powerful supernatural entities,
dragons are both feared and revered at the same time. The fact that they can equally be
considered either a withholder or a bringer of life-giving water provides further grounds for
ambivalence, with positive and negative attitudes toward them co-existing or competing in
many regions of the world.585 In addition, large and partially literate complex civilisations
have the potential to develop much more fragmented “dragonscapes” than small pre-literate
tribal groups.586 Accordingly, it should come as no surprise to find that in Egypt both attitudes
were manifested side by side: some dragon-like entities were considered good, others evil.
The cryptic entity named Iaau, which has some rainbow-serpent-dragon characteristics,
seems to have had an investment in both moral categories, albeit with an emphasis on evil
(Section 3). Uniquely, a Iaau-related attestation in CT 698 (CT VI: 332b-c) may preserve an
Egyptian remembrance of the archaic Rainbow Taboo, which forbids one to point at a
rainbow (Section 1).587

The negative dragon paradigm, represented in the ancient Near East by the cosmogonic
sea-dragon Tiamat, was epitomised in Egypt by Apophis, the arch-enemy of the sun-god
Re.588 The negative perception of dragons later became firmly entrenched in Europe.
Positively-regarded dragons, which were an integral feature of ancient Near Eastern belief589
and which have always been dominant in Chinese thought, also had considerable
representation in ancient Egypt. Examples adduced in the survey include the benevolent
serpent-god of the Shipwrecked Sailor, as well as Wadjet, Mehen, Heneb and Hayshesh. It is
worth noting that the assessment of a dragon-like entity’s disposition as good or evil was
rarely absolute and was often a matter of perspective. For example, the crocodile-god Sobek
was regarded positively as a deity who embodied pharaonic might, and Sobek eventually
became identified with all of the solar gods, but at the same time his earthly avatar was
reviled and feared as a ruthless predator.590 Equally, Ammut was generally detested as the
ultimate threat to the deceased’s survival in the Netherworld, yet she was merely executing
the entirely justified will of the gods. Similarly, César Méndez observes that there “seems to
be a fuzzy boundary between the protective and damaging qualities of fiery snakes. […] All
in all, we can assume an ambivalent meaning of fire in the BoG [Book of Gates], being
destructive against enemies of the Sungod but protect[ive] and purifying for the blessed
dead.”591

Despite the royal revisionism suggested by the Pyramid Texts, which would have meant
that rainbows could no longer be considered either autonomous or snake-like, some
associations between rainbows and serpents/dragons did survive. The alarming but beneficent
snake-god of the Shipwrecked Sailor preserves an unusually comprehensive set of clues that
hint at its origin in a rainbow-serpent-dragon (Table 1): it has a giant snake-like body;
inhabits a normally submarine abode; can withhold the waters to reveal its home as an island;
is mistaken for a storm; is brightly coloured; has precious metal and gemstones on its head;
has hair, including a beard; can breathe fire; causes earthquakes; guards the exotic treasures
of its island; and has a vulnerability to thunderbolts.

Some correctly-acting Egyptian dragon-like entities have parallels in later European

esotericism, especially in alchemy – a process whose all-important “chymical wedding” is a

100
coincidentia oppositorum analogous to the crucial fusion of Re with Osiris during the sun-
god’s nocturnal journey. For example, New Kingdom depictions of Mehen and his associates
seem to anticipate by millennia certain symbols that emerge as important alchemical
emblems, including the ouroboros and the Rebis. The former appears to be a case of direct
inheritance;592 the latter is perhaps more likely to represent the independent re-emergence of a
gestalt or Jungian archetypal image.593

A non-Egyptian origin for the alchemical Rebis seems to be supported by the existence of
an engraved agate – which Jung supposed to be Late Babylonian (7-6th centuries BCE)594 –
showing a crowned two-headed androgyne that is especially close to the later alchemical
Rebis compositions (Fig. 102).595 However, the item’s former owner, Félix Lajard, admits
that “the style of the drawing and the execution of the work do not allow it to be fixed beyond
the second or third century of our era [… ;] it belongs, as I said, to the second or third century
CE.”596 The design certainly looks like what one might expect to find on a Late Antique
magical gem. Lajard argues for a Mesopotamian origin, but the syncretistic iconography

Fig. 102. Design from an ovoid/conoid agate gem/seal formerly in Félix Lajard’s collection showing
a crowned two-headed androgyne – identified by Lajard as “the Oriental androgynous Venus” –
which is especially close to the later European Rebis images. Note the two small horizontal dragons
which launch themselves outwards from the figure’s arms to attack the large coiled serpents, since
the former could easily be misread as a single horizontal serpentine beast with two heads, like the
dragon later surmounted by Rebis. The two coiled snakes held by the androgyne have visual
counterparts in the two snake motifs held aloft by Rebis in Figs. 85 & 86. Image: Félix Lajard, via
Heidelberg University Library.597

101
shows Egyptian influences as well,598 and its heritage is likely to be thoroughly mixed.599
Interestingly, Lajard interpreted the two small horizontal dragons that attack the large solar
and lunar serpents as representing “the repeated attacks of a furious dragon which constantly
threatened the existence of […] the sun and the moon,” this Apophis-like antagonism being
witnessed on earth in the form of solar and lunar eclipses.600

Apophis did not appear in Egyptian belief until the First Intermediate Period, where he
provided a necessary reification of the social turmoil and existential dread that followed the
failure of the Old Kingdom. Although Sabine Stemmler-Harding has asserted that “the
etymological, historical and mythological origins of Apophis are unknown,”601 Susanne
Bickel has pointed to potential precursors in the many malevolent snakes of the Pyramid
Texts.602 The Egyptian paradigm of a giant world-threatening dragon could also have drawn
upon ancient Near Eastern notions of cosmic chaos-monsters, a type later epitomised by
Tiamat. An Egyptian interest in Near Eastern ophidian beliefs is evidenced by the presence of
some early Northwest Semitic serpent spells in the Pyramid Texts,603 and communication on
cosmographic matters is suggested by the fact that the Egyptian star constellation thought to
have represented Apophis corresponds to the Babylonian snake-constellation that later
became the serpentine water-monster Hydra.604 Whatever Apophis’s origins, it is intriguing
that so many tell-tale traces of his rainbow-serpent-dragon origin survive (Table 1): a huge
serpentine body; an aquatic lifestyle; an occasionally horned head; equally at home in the
Netherworld and the sky; antagonistic toward the sun; vulnerable to thunder and lightning; a
causer of earthquakes; able to withhold the waters of both the Nile and the
subterranean/celestial waterway; domiciled on a sandbank named “Water-Bringer;” and
living and dying within the caves of the Netherworld.

The distribution of creatures in Table 1 provides some further insights into how dragon-
like traits were apportioned in the Egyptian imagination. Almost all of the Egyptian
“dragons” had serpent-based bodies, but many were augmented by human legs/feet and
others by avian wings, with some possessing both types of accessory. Wings were always
those of birds (rather than of insects or bats) and most of the explicitly winged dragons were
benevolent/ protective. Some (but not all) dragons from both the malevolent and well-
intentioned categories could breathe/spit fire. Apophis is a surprising omission from the
malevolent group; although he could spit venom which may be described as fiery, he did not
breathe fire and was in fact vulnerable to it.605 Those in the well-intentioned group may
uphold maat either by protecting the virtuous (attacking only when provoked) or by inflicting
never-ending pain on wrongdoers (punishing in a continuous manner), although members of
the large cast of barely-differentiated Netherworld snake goddesses seem only too ready to
overstep the boundary. Unsurprisingly, withholding rain (or its proxy, the Nile inundation)
was exclusively associated with malevolent entities. Both malevolent and correctly-acting
dragons were vulnerable to thunderbolts. Being agents of destruction and chaos, the
malevolent or punishing dragons usually did not have any positive treasure to guard,606 the
“snorting serpent” from the Hymn of the Pearl (Section 5) being an exception. Of course,
Table 1 is far from exhaustive, so these trends should be regarded as tentative initial findings
which need to be validated or modified by further research.

Many Netherworld snake deities/demons had multiple heads. Serpents with a head at each
end, or possessing a circular configuration, were likely to be protective. A circular

102
configuration for Apophis admitted and accepted that the ordered world was wholly
circumscribed by chaos, but at the same time rendered him harmless, since his destructive
powers (i.e. his mouth) were turned upon himself (in the form of his tail). Moreover, forcing
him to adopt the configuration of his antithesis – the order-protecting serpent Mehen –
achieved a shift in emphasis toward the creative and regenerative potential of the not-yet-
existing, with the circular space enclosed by his body acting as a kind of cosmic womb or egg
(Fig. 32). In the 11th Hour of the Amduat, it is actually the beneficent time-reversing serpent
Ankh-Netjeru who is called mHn tA, the “world-encircler,” although he is not depicted in a
circular conformation.607 Erik Hornung suspects that all of the serpents that can adopt a
circular configuration are ultimately “different names and forms of the same giant monster
that daily swallows everything in order to disgorge it, rejuvenated and renewed. The miracle
of the perpetual regeneration of the Creation is accomplished only with the aid of this
equivocal creature.”608 It is certainly true that the time-snake Hiririet looks similar in size and
conformation to Apophis (Figs. 23 & 76),609 and indeed has been identified as Apophis by
several modern authors;610 moreover, in the tomb of Rameses VI, Apophis and Hekenet
possess similar coloration and markings (Figs. 63 & 75).

It is possible – perhaps even likely – that Ammut does not represent the survival of an
archaic entity that arose naturally in the ancient Egyptian imagination, but rather constitutes
the latter-day product of Egyptian priests who consciously and intentionally followed
established “rules for creating a dragon.”611 Ammut’s absence from the Netherworld until the
New Kingdom, her non-serpentine body-shape and lack of other residual rainbow-serpent
features hint in this direction, as does the fact that she is the only female “negative dragon”
(i.e., red entry) of any significance in Table 1. One might reasonably speculate that the
compounding of three very dangerous animals to produce this hybrid super-monster was
deliberate; indeed, in some vignettes, the lion and hippopotamus parts of her body are
delineated from each other by straight line boundaries that are anything but organic. Overall,
Ammut’s body-shape conforms to the ancient Near Eastern paradigm of a mammalian body
with reptilian embellishments, so – in terms of typology – she groups with the serpopards on
the Narmer and Oxford palettes (Section 1 & Fig. 5). This is so despite the fact that Ammut
upholds maat and the serpopards most likely represent isfet, its opposite.

Technically, the therioanthropomorphic forms of Sobek and Renenutet also conform to the
ancient Near Eastern paradigm of a mammalian body with reptilian embellishments.
However, one is probably justified in considering the Egyptian penchant for animal-headed
gods with human bodies as a special category that stands alone, especially since the ancient
Near Eastern dragon paradigm relates to quadruped mammals. Accordingly, the subset of
therioanthropomorphs that have reptilian heads on human bodies (e.g. Figs. 97, 98 & 103)
should be considered a native Egyptian development. Taweret, too, conforms to the ancient
Near Eastern paradigm when depicted walking upright with the head of a hippopotamus,
arms and legs of a lion, human breasts and the tail of a crocodile,612 but she too must be
considered indigenous. Although Ammut and this embodiment of Taweret are both female
chimerae composed from much the same mixture of animals – crocodile, hippopotamus and
lion – the two were obviously perceived very differently by ancient Egyptians.

Importations beyond those already countenanced could have added further to the
kaleidoscope of dragon-related diversity evident in Egypt. The Coptic Nile-dragon that is

103
Fig. 103. Knife-wielding and snake-headed guardian of a gate of the House of Osiris in Spell 146
from the Book of the Dead; vignette in the tomb of Queen Tawseret (KV 14). Photo: Author.

104
vanquished by Mari Girgis, for example, is clearly a late Christian overlay – it is
unmistakably a dragon of the type that became so popular in the legends of medieval
Europe.613 Nevertheless, its distinguishing feature – a rapacious desire for young women –
has ancient Egyptian antecedents in the attributes of the crocodile-god Sobek. And in another
sense, too, Girgis’s dragon is really on home soil:614 medieval European depictions of St.
George slaying a Typhonian dragon (Rev 12-13) merely continue a visual tradition that
begins with pharaonic images of Seth spearing Apophis from atop the solar barque (Fig.
38),615 extends through Ptolemaic temple reliefs of Horus harpooning the Seth‑hippopotamus
(Fig. 49), continues further through Roman depictions of Horus/Seth spearing Apophis or
some other chaos-animal from horseback (Figs. 50 & 51), and finally culminates in the
Coptic tradition (from the 6th century CE on) of equestrian Christian saints spearing the devil
in the form of a dragon (Figs. 101 & 104).616

Looking backward in time, the spearing of Apophis by Seth conforms to the prehistoric
paradigm of a Thunderer felling a dragon by lightning-strike or thunderbolt. As in other parts
of the world, in Egypt the Thunderer had the characteristics of a raptor or other carnivorous
bird: initially in the forms of Min-Horus and Nehkbet, and later in the various winged and/or
falcon-headed incarnations of Seth. As has happened in other cultures, these protectors seem
to have appropriated for themselves the bright colours of their rainbow-serpent antagonist.
Reciprocally, there is a tendency for dragons to be perceived as a source of thunder – as done
both in ancient Egypt and elsewhere – and sometimes even lightning, rather than as a victim
of these phenomena.617

Ultimately, perhaps all mythic agents risk enmeshment with their antagonists to the point
that the two become indistinguishable – or perhaps, in fulfillment of the Heraclitean
enantiodromia espoused by Jung,618 each is actually doomed to turn into its opposite. Earlier,
we noted Erik Hornung’s suspicion that the world-destroying and world-regenerating serpents
are merely different aspects of the same entity.619 Similarly, “the Egyptians imagined the
primal [i.e. chaos] powers as snakes before the creation of the world”620 and placed the
nascent creator-god within a coiled snake,621 while BD 175 predicts that the final form of the
sun-god will also be a serpent.622 As this essay draws to a close, we might recall that part of a
painting by Vasily Kandinsky (Fig. 2) was used at the outset to illustrate the rainbow–dragon
equivalence that motivated this investigation; to this we can now add that, in Kandinsky’s late
works, Europe’s quintessential dragon-slayer had morphed into the enclosing shape pioneered
by the Mehen serpent and perfected by the cosmic chaos-dragon, the ouroboros.623 In the
words of Guggenheim Museum curator Megan Fontanella: “Saint George, the defender of
life, had metamorphosed into the circle – a potent symbol of renewal in many cultures.”624 A
reconciliation of slayer with dragon might seem impossible, but “‘The circle,’ argued
Kandinsky, ‘is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions.’”625 It is only fitting, then, to
remember that the collapse of antitheses and unification of opposites is also the outcome of
the alchemical magnum opus,626 the process which has served as a leitmotif to the present
opera minore.

105
Fig. 104. Coptic icon of St. Victor vanquishing a dragon, 18th century, attrib. Yuhanna Armani. Coptic Mus-
eum, Cairo, cat. 4695. Photo: Author.

106
© Lloyd D. Graham (2024), excluding third-party images and quotations. 09.05.2024_v.01.

Cite as: Lloyd D. Graham (2024) “Rainbow serpents, dragons and dragon-slayers: Global traits, ancient
Egyptian particulars, and alchemical echoes,” online at https://independent.academia.edu/LloydGraham.

Endnotes

Note: All URLs were valid on 9 May, 2024. TLA = Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, online at https://thesaurus-
linguae-aegyptiae.de/search.
1
Left image: Detail from the alchemical manuscript titled Thesaurus thesaurorum, ca. 1725, Wellcome
Collection MS.4775, p.22, online at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nc2fz6ee. The multicoloured
three-headed serpent represents a fractional distillation process; McLean (n.d.a). Photo: Public Domain, via
Wellcome Collection. Right image: Nehebukau, 4th Hour of the Amduat, tomb of Rameses VI (KV 9). Photo:
Author.
2
Blust (2023). Note that his all-important Table 1 has been misformatted by the copy-editor, with all of the “+”
symbols shifted to the left in order to close up any gaps in the rows; fortunately, the corresponding table in
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1) is correctly formatted.
3
Blust (2023: 6).
4
Thomson (1975: 40-45 & 104); Hansen & Hansen (1992: 166, s.v. wanampi); Mudooroo (1994: 90 s.v.
Katajuta, details for “Wanambi”); Graham (2003: 32 & 36 n.3); Blust (2023: 5).
5
Blust (2023: 5).
6
Blust (2023: 5).
7
Blust (2021); Blust (2023:247-256); quotation from Blust (2023:247).
8
Blust (2023: 134-135).
9
Kerle (1995: 21); Axelby (2012: 4-5).
10
Kerle (1995: 19-21)
11
Hercus (1990: 127).
12
Blust (2023: 2).
13
The skeletal bridge arch is reminiscent of the structure of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge, which was
completed three years before this painting was created, so it could be a veiled allusion to what – at that time
– would have been perceived as the continent of the Rainbow Serpent. Kandinsky’s work from that period
contains many multicoloured serpentine forms, and a snake partitioned into contrasting blocks of colour
forms the horns of the inverted shaman’s headdress in his classic work Around the Circle (1940). See
Fontanella (2021a: 65); Bashkoff & Fontanella (2021: 155).
14
E.g. Tunisian Sheep Festival (1905), Bashkoff & Fontanella (2021: 73); Murnau with Rainbow (1909), online
at https://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-562.php; Painting with White Border (1913), Antliff & Leighten
(2021: 37) & Bashkoff & Fontanella (2021: 97); St. George and the Dragon (1915), online at
https://www.wikiart.org/en/wassily-kandinsky/st-george-and-the-dragon.
15
Blust (2023: 21).
16
Blust (2023: 20-21).
17
Black & Green (1992: 166).
18
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Friedrich-Johann-Justin-Bertuch_Mythical-Creature-
Dragon_1806.jpg; full book page at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bertuch-fabelwesen.JPG.
19
Black & Green (1992: 166).
20
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Narmer_Palette_serpopard_side.jpg.
21
Ataç (2015: 424). For example, serpopards twinned in the same manner as on the Narmer Palette appear on a
green jasper cylinder-seal of the Uruk period, Louvre MNB 1167, online at
http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=11330.
22
Kanawati & Evans (2018: 26).
23
Blust (2023: 67-76).

107
24
Blust (2023: 68-70).
25
Blust (2023: 70-76).
26
As investigated for Indo-European cultures by Watkins (1995).
27
Schweitzer (2010: 27).
28
Schweitzer (2010: 123 & 131). To adapt the text to its new context as an excerpt, the first word of the first
block-quote has been changed from “These” to “The.” In the second block-quote, “such thoughts” relates to
a specific passage in Libellus VII within the 2nd- to 3rd-century CE Corpus Hermeticum (Scott 1924: 170-
173) and similar sentiments in the 15th-century alchemical text Aurora Consurgens (von Franz 1966: 220 &
225-226) but works equally well as a follow-on to the content of the first block-quote.
29
Blust (2023: 82-84).
30
This dragon withholds the annual inundation of the Nile until a virgin has been sacrificed to it, so it could be
considered an Egyptian equivalent to a dragon that withholds rain in countries where agriculture depends on
rainfall.
31
Blust (2023: 85-86 & 119). Globally, rainbow-serpent-dragons bring rain more commonly than they withhold
it.
32
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 5, 55-66 & 86-92).
33
E.g. 11th Hour of the Amduat (Hornung & Abt 2007: 330). One can include here Neith’s winged-serpent
avatar (Fig. 100).
34
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 94-95).
35
Borghouts (2007: 21).
36
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 94-96).
37
Tiamat “gave birth to monster serpents,” so it is reasonable to assume at least a partially serpentine form for
her, despite Blust’s claim that the typical Ancient Near Eastern dragon does not have serpentine form (Blust
2023: 16).
38
Blust (2023: 13-20).
39
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 96-97).
40
E.g. Keel (2000: 117f.) describes Ägyptisches Museum der Universität Leipzig, cat. 5079, a scarab which
bears a representation of Seth-Ba’al spearing the horned snake; the horns on this serpent are too large and
too numerous – four are shown – merely to be the skin-projections of the horned viper. A drawing of the
design is reproduced by Keel (2009: 91 Abb. 12).
41
Borghouts (2007: 22). As with Apophis, these seem to go beyond the skin-projections of the horned viper.
42
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 97-98).
43
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 99).
44
Wilkinson (2003: 224-225).
45
E.g. Amduat, 4th Hour (Hornung & Abt 2007: 121); 11th Hour (Hornung & Abt 2007: 330); Book of Gates, 10th
Hour (Hornung & Abt 2014: 344, 356-357 & 359).
46
Blust (2023: 13-20). As mentioned in the main text, the trait is shown as a warm-blooded one for the first two
columns of the table because the Egyptian entities in this row usually stand upon mammalian limbs.
47
Blust (2023: 56-57, 67-74 & 211).
48
Summary table in Blust (2023: 76).
49
Blust (2023: 75).
50
Blust (2023: 68-70 & 74-75).
51
For the perception of red as the dominant colour of rainbows, see Blust (2023: 184 & 205).
52
“The Basilisk” = Iufaa snake-deity II (Landgráfová & Janák 2017: Pl 22.2). “As for this snake, it is a red
snake. There are lines on him like lines of gold, silver, green stone, and galena. His front is made of flint-
stone; the tip of his tail is made of true lapis lazuli” (Landgráfová & Janák 2017: 116). Some of the other
snakes in that paper (e.g. Snakes V, VI) are also described as red and/or multicoloured; these too are
correctly-acting entities. It is in this tomb that Hayshesh is given the name “Red” (Altmann-Wendling 2023:
50).
53
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 104-105).
54
Blust (2023: 189).
55
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 109-111).

108
56
Morenz (2004: 203-205); Hart (2005: 32); Book of Gates, 6th Hour (Hornung & Abt 2014: 205); Delia (2020:
196).
57
Blust (2023: 84).
58
Blust (2023: 173).
59
Book of Gates, 4th Hour (Hornung & Abt 2014: 111).
60
A dragon “can be personified,” and “has human traits,” in some cases “giving the dragon the ability to speak
and interact with humans like one of their kind” (Blust 2023: 27 & 124-125 & 201-211).
61
Borghouts (2007: 22).
62
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1) ); Blust (2023: 114).
63
Book of Gates, 12th Hour: “His venom descends in the West” (Hornung & Abt 2014: 427); possibly Book of
the Dead Spell 32, “Thy fiery venom shall not be ejected against me” (Stemmler-Harding 2016: 109).
64
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 114-116).
65
Wilkinson (2003: 223); Pinch (2002: 107).
66
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 116-117 & 190-200).
67
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 202-206).
68
E.g. Lives in a cavern: CT 414 and the Books of the Earth R6.A2.2.18 (Roberson 2012: 349); Killed in a
cavern: Amduat, 7th Hour (Hornung & Abt 2007: 219).
69
Blust (2023: 92-94).
70
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 105-106).
71
Blust (2023: 106-108).
72
Blust (2023: 212-213); also attested in South America for Bolivia.
73
Wilkinson (2003: 223). Blust (2023: 108) counts Apophis and Sito (= Sa-Ta; Faulkner 1985: 86) in this
category, but the latter’s inclusion is probably not justified.
74
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 108-109).
75
Blust (2023: 213-214). The non-Egyptian examples all relate only to the rainbow, not to the dragon.
76
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 101-103 & 178-181); also found in South America and Oceania.
77
Thus, for example, Sobek – although a god who in other contexts is regarded positively – features negatively
in this paper for his association with the anti-solar snake of CT 160 (Section 5) and for the dual danger that
he poses to women (Section 12), so his name is recorded in red wherever it appears in the Table.
78
PT 232 (§236a-c); Wilke (1931). This interpretation was considered unconvincing by Faulkner (2007: 55), see
Utterance 232 n.1.
79
Wilkinson (2016: 188-190).
80
Ventker (2012); Bojowald (2021: 36);.
81
Kemboly (2010: 107 incl. fn.349).
82
Kemboly (2010: 310 fn. 946).
83
Kuhlmann (1996); Kemp (2006: 144-153); Wilson (2010: 785); Verner (2012: 515).
84
Cauville (1990: 57); Roberts (2019: 93 Fig. 81 legend).
85
Bojowald (2021). In alchemy, a nexus of the two types of bow appears in a woodcut in Zadith ben Hamuel
(1560) De Chemia Senioris, online at
https://www.alchemywebsite.com/images/Symbolism_De_Chemia_Senioris_1560.jpg.
86
Blust (2023: 138-141 & 160-161); Bojowald (2021: 38). Perhaps it is for this reason that dragons are often
shown with tails or tongues that resemble arrows, i.e. with a barbed triangular tip; for tails, see e.g. Fig. 65;
for tongues, see e.g. the illustration of the 3rd Key in the Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, online at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Keys_of_Basil_Valentine#/media/File:Musaeum_Hermeticum_1
678_p_398_III._Clavis_AQ27.tif and https://www.imago-images.de/st/0080790182.
87
Hereafter, Coffin Text is abbreviated CT, e.g. the current text would be shown as CT 698. De Buck’s passage
numbering is shown in the standard format of (CT volume: page|segment) where the volume is given in
Roman numerals, e.g. (CT VI: 332b-c).
88
TLA lemma 860790. Frandsen (2000: 18 n.22) confesses in respect of pD.tyw 5w that “It is not clear to me
what this expression actually refers to. FAULKNER […] translates: ‘O you of the expanses of Shu’, while
PAUL BARGUET, Textes des sarcophages, p.213, renders ‘O Archer de l’Espace’.” Kemboly (2010: 116
fn.375) admits equally candidly: “I do not know what pDtyw 5w means. Is it a collective or individual name?
109
 Does it refer to one single or two beings? It can refer to celestial zones or expanses, but it can also from the
context represent an individual, perhaps a member of one of the foreign and hostile countries bordering
Egypt (the Nine Bows people), or simply an inhabitant of the Eastern Desert or region.”
89
Following Frandsen (2000: 18, incl. fn.23) and Kemboly (2010: 115-116, incl. fn.376) for CT VI: 332b-c: i
pD.tyw Sw xtm.w rA n(.y) hAb Dba=f ir mAA.t=f, but translating “points the finger” in line with Faulkner (2015
II: 263).
90
Blust (2021); Blust (2023: 249, 251 & 253).
91
Faulkner (2007: 263); Kemboly (2010: 116).
92
Frandsen (2000: 18).
93
Frandsen (2000: 12-13 & 32). Ritner (2017: 281 fn.6) comments: “Frandsen’s analysis of Iaau is now disputed
at length in Kemboly 2010, pp. 32–35 and 115–87. As rightly noted by Lana Troy (2012) in her review of the
work, ‘it is apparent that Kemboly has a worldview to defend’ (p. 325) with a ‘transparent theological bias’
(p. 326) in favor of a blameless creator. To rehabilitate Iaau, Kemboly must dismiss the evil determinative
associated with the being (pp. 131–32), suggest numerous interpretive revisions (e.g., p. 133), and adopt a
position of agnosticism regarding whether ‘eating faeces and drinking urine . . . are prototypical symbols or
epitomes of evil’ (p. 119). None of this is compelling, and much is wrong (see Ritner 2008, pp. 168–72, on
the effects of bodily reversal).” All of the works cited by Ritner are included in the Bibliography of the
present paper.
94
Although Iaau can be considered an evil force that pre-dates the Creation (Frandsen 2000: 16-17), he is
unrelated to the much later entity Ιαω, which is a rendering of the Semitic deity YHWH (Yahweh) in
Greco‑Egyptian texts. Ιαω too can be considered a cosmogonic source of evil: he has Sethian associations,
and features in Coptic Gnostic texts as IAO, an Archon who represents or assists the jealous and ignorant
demiurge Ialdabaoth. For a discussion of Ιαω and IAO, see Graham (2021: 69-70).
95
Kemboly (2010: 120-121, 126-127 & 146-149).
96
Frandsen (2000: 14-17).
97
Kemboly (2010: 99, 101 & 149-156); Faulkner (2015 I: 140-141).
98
Kemboly (2010: 107 incl. fn.349). Like the Opet texts at Karnak, texts in Kom Ombo, too, consider the west
wind to be a bringer of rain (Frandsen 2000: 17 n.21). However, Frandsen (2000: 17) is probably correct in
considering this to be a later development; originally, the west wind was probably viewed as an ill wind that
brought sand from the desert.
99
Frandsen (2000: 17 n.21).
100
Kemboly (2010: 145). On the identification as fighters and celestial gate-wardens, see also Faulkner (2007:
61 n.1).
101
Kemboly (2010: 135-136).
102
Kemboly (2010: 139-140 & 146); Faulkner (2015 I: 275).
103
Frandsen (2000: 32).
104
Blust (2023: 171-172).
105
Frandsen (2000: 20-21); Kemboly (2010: 141-144 & 147).
106
Hereafter, Pyramid Text is abbreviated PT, e.g. the current text would be shown as PT 570. As Sethe’s
passage numbering is shown in the standard format of (§paragraph|segment), e.g. (§1443a-b).
107
Faulkner (2007: 223).
108
Explicit for Merenre; for Pepi, both Faulkner (2007: 223) and Allen (2013: 200) read a.wy(=i), “my arms.” In
all cases, the sense is that the arms are those of the king.
109
Bojowald (2021: 36).
110
Faulkner (2007: 223).
111
Allen (2015: 180).
112
Bojowald (2021: 36).
113
The word nTr does not need to refer to a specific god. For the usage of the word with no apparent relationship
to a particular god, see Erman & Grapow (1971 II: 358.1).
114
If the nTr was meant to denote the ascending king whose deification was being mediated by his two arms, i.e.
through climbing, then presumably the preposition would have been the m of instrument rather than Hr.
Allen’s alternative translation of the final two sentences of the extract as “The god is given birth by the sky
on the arms of Shu and Tefnut, on the arms of him who rises and becomes large” is incompatible with
110
 Merenre’s text but has the virtue of allowing the nTr to be the ascending king; in this case the rainbow would
be the less problematic “him who rises and becomes large.”
115
Alternative parsings make it possible that the Great One being referred to is the king, but this seems less
likely as the king spends the next section repeatedly informing the gods that he is “a great one, son of a great
one,” which would be unnecessary if the gods had already acclaimed him as such at the outset.
116
Faulkner (2007: 223-224).
117
Barbotin (2014: 23-24 & 28).
118
Gardiner (1957: 489).
119
Beaux (2010: 61).
120
Beaux (2010: 61).
121
Griffith (1898: 30).
122
Beaux (2010: 61).
123
Translated from the transliteration of Allen (2013: 105-106), cf. Faulkner (2007: 107); Beaux (2010: 62 &
65-66); Allen (2015: 73).
124
The same term for ladder – mAq.t – is the one used in CT 76 (CT II: 10d & 11c) to describe the means by
which the creator-god ascended out of the Nun (Kemboly 2010: 45).
125
That of Sithathor was found in the pyramid complex of Senwosret III, Dahshur; that of Sithathoriunet, in the
pyramid complex of Senwosret II, Lahun.
126
Griffith (1898: Pl. III, Fig. 37).
127
Online at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/544232.
128
Faulkner (2007: 107); Allen (2015: 73).
129
Following Allen (2013: 154); Allen (2015: 137); cf. Faulkner (2007: 171); Beaux (2010: 62).
130
Beaux (2010: 65).
131
Faulkner (2015 I: 77). If they really are rainbow-ladders, it seems fitting that the Supports-of-Shu are put
together by what the spell calls the “Eight Chaos-gods” (i.e., the Hermopolitan Ogdoad); the association
between rainbows, dragons and chaos will later take shape in the form of Apophis (Section 5).
132
Faulkner (2007: 51 n.21).
133
Faulkner (1962: 185).
134
Beaux (2010: 65-66); my translation from the French.
135
Wendrich (2010: 4).
136
Schunck (1985: Ch. 1).
137
Beaux (2010: 63); my translation from the French. For this observation Beaux cites Groff (1896: 245-246),
as republished in a compendium of Groff’s collected works (Groff 1908).
138
Interestingly, it is guarded by a two-headed snake (Hornung & Abt 2007: 149). A snake with a head at each
end is a symbol of the rainbow (Section 10); in this case, however, the two heads are at the same end of the
animal.
139
Hornung & Abt (2007: 148). In the burial chamber of the same tomb (KV 9), within the second-last register
of Part D of the Book of the Earth, the wings of the emerging Khepri scarab – which arc forward – have
exactly the same nested stripe pattern and colours as this burial mound of Osiris, augmented by a yellow
leading edge with red hatching, and therefore resemble an inverted rainbow. See the close-up colour photo in
Hawass (2006: 180).
140
Compare with the pr nw decoration in Fig. 7. Stripes with similar coloration often feature in the atef crown
of Osiris, too.
141
Hornung & Abt (2007: 158).
142
Hornung & Abt (2007: 148).
143
Barbotin (2014: 27), with the Egyptian being transliterated directly from the photograph and facsimile in his
Fig. 3.
144
Faulkner (1962: 13).
145
Roberts (2019: 191-192).
146
In Spell 110 of the Book of the Dead, he is called “Osiris, Lord of Putrefaction, Lord of the Swamp-land;”
Schweitzer (2010: 65), similarly Faulkner (1985: 107).

111
147
Hornung (1990: 116 & 118). Others, too, see in Osiris a progression from black to green, albeit without white
as an intermediate (Cavalli 2016: 61).
148
The previously-explained refraction of light which causes the eye to first perceive blue-green, then red at
sunrise.
149
Green – yellow – red also reflects the natural colour sequence for the ripening of fruit.
150
E.g. Maria Prophetissa in Alexandria (1st-3rd century CE), Zosimos of Panopolis (4th century CE); Taylor
(1930 113 & 116); Patai (1994: 60 & 81-91); Greenberg (2000: 26 & 71). For Zosimos, who appears to have
been inspired by religious iconography in Greco-Egyptian temples, the alchemical quest was characterised
by a “unity of forms with many colors” (Escolano-Poveda 2022: 110). Zosimos wrote that the four-colour
sequence of the work (black, white, yellow, red) was known to Maria (Bogdan 2007:197 n.90).
151
Online at https://www.flickr.com/photos/manna4u/36552411675/in/album-72157687439529835/; licence CC
BY-NC-SA 2.0.
152
Roberts (2019: 187-188).
153
Waite (1893: 116); Schweitzer (2010: 116); Völlnagel (2016). The 17th-century Theatre of Terrestrial
Astronomy, ascribed to Edward Kelly, is one example of a treatise that places the peacock’s tail between the
nigredo and albedo, as prescribed here (McLean n.d.b). The 18th-century Hermaphroditische Sonn- und
Mond-Kind is another (McLean n.d.c-d).
154
Roberts (2019: 187-191); Pimentel (2024). The green stage now seems to be positioned slightly earlier than
before, appearing as the finale of the “peacock’s tail” phase and leading into the albedo: “the fire may be
increased till glorious colours appear, which the Sons of Art have called Cauda Pavonis, or the Peacock’s
Tail. These colours come and go, as heat is administered approaching to the third degree, till all is of a
beautiful green, and as it ripens assumes a perfect whiteness” (Waite 1893a: 116). Others retain the green-
after-white order, but to do so they complicate the simple black – white – green – red progression into a
recursive black – temporary white – green – peacock’s tail – true white – red (McLean n.d.e). The 17th-
century Cabala Mineralis has the variant sequence black – green – white – peacock’s tail – red (McLean
n.d.f).
155
Roberts (2019: 192).
156
So also Libavius (1606) Alchymia, caption XX (Jung 1968: §400 & Fig. 142).
157
In the magnum opus, the iridescence of the peacock’s tail “could arise through the formation of a layer of oil
on the surface of the watery mass (in the wet way) or some oxidation-reduction reactions, say on the surface
of liquid metal (in the dry way)” (McLean n.d.e).
158
McLean (n.d.a).
159
Online at https://wellcomecollection.org/works/nc2fz6ee.
160
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Knight_standing_on_fountains_-
_Splendor_Solis_(1582),_f.7_-_BL_Harley_MS_3469.jpg, cropped.
161
Trismosin (1920: 30). Escolano-Poveda (2022: 100-102 & 110) points out parallels between the
mummification process and certain visions described by the early alchemist Zosimos of Panopolis, but does
not remark on its wholesale compliance with the principle articulated in this quote.
162
McLean (n.d.b).
163
Waite (1893b: 119 & 147. For a detailed explanation of the orb below the cross, see the 7th Key of the 17th-
century Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine, which has Latin captions in the sub-compartments (McLean n.d.g. &
2000a: 104).
164
Cavalli (2016: 49 & 53); amplified on p. 55.
165
In PT 631 (§1789): “I have put my brother together, I have reassembled his members” (Faulkner 2007: 262).
166
Cavalli (2016: 53-54); Graham (2020).
167
Cavalli (2016: 59).
168
In other respects, it seems to anticipate the duality of the Red King and White Queen – something we will
encounter in Section 9.
169
Another version of this emblem is online at McLean (n.d.r).
170
Trismosin (1920: Pl. X); McLean (2000a: 29-30).
171
Trismosin (1920: 33).
172
The page margins and decorative border have been cropped from the original image to maximise the clarity
of the emblem proper.

112
173
Hornung & Abt (2007: 190).
174
Schweitzer (2010: 122).
175
Interestingly, the name of Seth is here represented euphemistically by the “hair” glyph, Gardiner sign D3.
176
Hornung & Abt (2007: 190).
177
Hornung (1999: 89).
178
Trismosin (1920: 33); McLean (2000a: 35).
179
Piankoff (1941: 5).
180
American Research Center in Egypt (n.d.); Schweitzer (2010: 67-68); Roberts (2019: 100-102); Curious
Egyptologist (2021).
181
McLean (n.d.g).
182
Winifred (1927: 171-172); Blackman (1933); Thompson (2016).
183
Vernus (2000).
184
Piankoff (1942: 58).
185
Curious Egyptologist (2021); American Research Center in Egypt (n.d.).
186
Alamy Image ID: ABA2YW; Order OY91902724, Invoice IY04307461.
187
McLean (2000a: 105). The corresponding stage in Mylius’s Philosophia Reformata of 1622 is titled
Fermentatio (Emblem 14); McLean (n.d.s).
188
McLean (n.d.e).
189
Schweitzer (2010: 111).
190
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musaeum_Hermeticum_1678_VIII._Clavis_AQ36_Key_8.tif.
191
Other versions with modern colouring may be seen online at McLean (1999) and https://www.imago-
images.com/bild/st/0080790115/w.jpg.
192
Demas & Agnew (2012: 293-298). Recall, however, Fig. 9, which – while dating from a much later period –
nevertheless links Hathor with the solar barque and rainbow-shaped broad collar.
193
Blust (2023: 136 & 175).
194
Blust (2023: 170).
195
Blust (2023: 185).
196
Blust (2023: 176-177).
197
Piankoff (1942: 17-18); Weeks (2005: 324).
198
Hornung (1990: 74-75).
199
The question as to which real-world snakes might have served as models for those depicted in Ramesside
royal tombs is discussed further, in relation to Apophis, in Section 5.
200
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 95-96); Lucarelli (2017: 136).
201
Walker (2010: 8-9). Compare the snake in Fig. 23 with the photograph online at
https://www.africansnakebiteinstitute.com/snake/african-snakes-african-rock-python/.
202
Méndez (2020: 11).
203
Apophis appears in a similarly shaped arc over a standing Osiris in Vignette 76 of the Book of the Earth, a
“Stretching of Apep” scene in which Apophis is killed (Roberson 2012: 287). This scene appears at lower
left on the left wall of the burial chamber within the same tomb, but in this case the snake is simply coloured
grey-black.
204
Hornung & Abt (2014: 83).
205
Weeks (2005: 271).
206
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apep_1.jpg.
207
Hornung (1982: 164 & 178-179); Hornung (1990: 107). Some authors feel that Apophis can only rarely be
identified with the ouroboros (Méndez 2020: 12).
208
Egyptian cognitive pluralism has already been introduced in Section 3.
209
Van der Sluijs & Peratt (2009: 6).
210
Leitz (2002 II: 72-74); Morenz (2004: 205).
211
Mo'alla IV: 8–10, as quoted by Morenz (2004: 202).
212
Hornung & Abt (2007: 230).
113
213
Hornung & Abt (2007: 230-232); Hornung & Abt (2014: 379). The idea of water-consuming rainbow
serpents seems to persist, much later, in relation to snakes/dragons in alchemy. For example, from the
Tractatus Aristotelis: “The serpent is more cunning than all the beasts of the earth; under the beauty of her
skin she shows a harmless face, and she forms herself in the manner of a materia hypostatica, through
illusion, when immersed in water. There she gathers together the virtues from the earth, which is her body.
Because she is very thirsty she drinks immoderately and becomes drunken, and she causes the nature
wherewith she is united to vanish (decipere)” (Jung 1968 §354 & Fig. 130).
214
TLA lemma 500902; Hornung (1963: 124-125); Hornung & Abt (2007: 231); Abbas (2016: 88).
215
The “sandbanks” of Apophis are, in some cases, identified with the snake itself and considered to be its coils
(Wilkinson 2003: 221).
216
Blust (2023: 117-118).
217
Hart (2005: 31); Gad (2021: 46 fn.2).
218
Ritner (2017: 282-283).
219
Ritner (2017: 284).
220
Blust (2023: 26-27, 75, 101 & 268).
221
Black & Green (1992: 128).
222
Black & Green (1992: 129 & 166).
223
Blust (2023: 15).
224
Hawass (2006: 102 & 122). For the general fear of being bitten and/or eaten by a Netherworld snake, see
Book of the Dead Spells 34 & 35, respectively (Faulkner 1985: 58). For the striking and blinding of Re by
Apophis, see CT 1089 (VII: 369d-370b), CT 1094 (VII 376b-377c) and Bickel (1998: 44).
225
Hart (2005: 32).
226
E.g. Hornung & Abt (2007: 230).
227
Compare with the drawing of the naked infants (which represent personified spirits) escaping upward from
the long serpent (which represents the heated prima materia) in the pseudonymous 16th-century manuscript
De alchimia, attributed to Thomas Aquinas (Jung 1968: §129).
228
Hornung & Abt (2014: 202-204).
229
Hornung (1990: 105).
230
Hornung (1999: 117).
231
Lesko (2005).
232
E.g. Blust (2023: 15 Fig. 2)
233
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dragon_on_%E4%B8%87%E5%8E%86%E6%AC%BE%E5%A1
%AB%E6%BC%86%E6%88%97%E9%87%91%E4%BA%91%E9%BE%99%E7%BA%B9%E7%AB%8B
%E6%9F%9C.jpg.
234
Bates (2008: 146). While many Far Eastern depictions show the dragon chasing the “solar eye” like a cat
playing with a ball, the ancient Egyptians headed in the opposite direction and developed a sacral game
(depicted at Deir el-Bahri, Luxor, Dendera, and Philae) in which a ball representing the “eye of Apophis”
had to be hit away by the king; this symbolically blinded the serpent (Morenz 2004: 122-140; Wilkinson
2003: 223). The Book of Gates reference to Apophis lacking eyes (and nose and ears) may anticipate the
outcome of this ritual game (Hornung & Abt 2014: 205).
235
Laufer (1915: 70 fn.5); Blust (2023: 106).
236
Laufer (1915: 56 fn.2).
237
Bates (2007: 7-8).
238
Borghouts (1973: 114-115).
239
Case (2011); Davidson College (n.d.). Presumably a combination of the fact that snakes lack eyelids and
therefore do not blink, and the defence strategy of “immobility means invisibility” adopted by many prey
animals.
240
Watkins (1995: 447).
241
Bates (2007: 7-8).
242
Libavius, explaining an emblem in his 1606 work Alchymia, equates the two animals as follows: “E, The
green lion. F, One-headed dragon. E and F both mean the same thing” (Jung 1968: §400 & Fig. 142). In the
7th Emblem of the 17th-century Theatre of Terrestrial Astronomy, attributed to Edward Kelly, a green lion
114
 devours the sun-disk while a green dragon does the same to an anthropomorphic sun-figure (Waite 1893b:
132-133). In the 18th-century Hermaphroditische Sonn- und Mond-Kind the fire-breathing dragon (Emblem
2) is paired with the Green Lion (Emblem 3), both of which represent raw primal energies (McLean 2000a:
155 & 160-161).
243
Later (note 532) we will encounter a lion-bodied and double-headed sphinx which – once again – is
technically not a dragon but which seems to provide much the same functionality. Both are solar animals,
due to the dragon’s origin in rainbows and ability to breathe fire, and due to the lion’s golden colour making
it the pre-eminent animal emblem of the sun. A further connection between dragons and lions is evident in
Greek mythology: the original Chimera was a fire-breathing monster whose foreparts were lion, mid-parts
goat, and whose tail was a serpent – a melange which included the heads of all three animals. She was the
daughter of the dragon Typhon, and the mother of the Sphinx and the Nemean lion (Kershaw 2007: 138-139
& 222; Augustyn 2024).
244
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ninedragonwallpic1.jpg, licence CC BY-SA 2.0.
245
Weeks (2005: 500).
246
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bernini_Medusa_01.JPG, licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
247
McLean (n.d.e).
248
Online at https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog/32367749; licence terms online at
https://lux.collections.yale.edu/content/open-access-policy-2011.
249
Garofalo (2015); Graham (2013); Blust (2023: 127).
250
Blust (2023: 105-106).
251
Online at https://www.deviantart.com/lloydg/art/Koji-pottery-fish-390321432.
252
Blust (2023: 106-108).
253
Van der Sluijs & Peratt (2009: 17).
254
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orphic-egg.png.
255
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 389).
256
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 390).
257
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 391-392).
258
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 391-392).
259
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 394).
260
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 386-388); Schweitzer (2010: 127-128).
261
Faulkner (2015 III: 152).
262
Faulkner (2015 III: 179 fn.8).
263
Faulkner (2015 III: 179 fn.9).
264
Faulkner (2015 III: 178).
265
Hornung & Abt (2007: 149).
266
So Mortexvar (2019) and Faulkner (2015 I: 138), albeit with question mark from the latter. Borghouts (1973:
114 fn.5) suggests instead “a plateau.”
267
BAXw is always written with the eye determinative, Gardiner sign D5 (TLA lemma 850448), and the root bAX
has three meanings related to the eye, one of which denotes the colour of the iris – a biological structure
named for the Greek goddess of the rainbow. The eye determinative is thought to have spread from one of
these roots to the name of the BAXw mountain (Bojowald 2011: 90).
268
Faulkner (2015 II: 138).
269
The height of the snake’s abode is consistent with the fact that rain-induced rainbows seem to touch the sky,
and the fact that waterfall-induced rainbows occur high above the falls that produce them (Blust 2023: 266).
270
Faulkner (2015 I: 138); Borghouts (1973: 114).
271
“The equivalence between color on the one hand, and on the other hand the light of the sun […] arises from
the observation of the dawn of each day when, for a few minutes, the red sun seems to set the desert
mountains ablaze. A hymn proclaims that the sun has ‘appeared in glory at daybreak so that the Two Lands
(Egypt) are illuminated with its color.’” Barbotin (2014: 27); my translation from the French.
272
The serpent is identified as Apophis at the end of Book of the Dead Spell 108, the New Kingdom cognate to
CT 160 (Faulkner 1985: 101-102).

115
273
Many versions with whm=f have the flame glyph (Gardiner sign Q7) as determinative (Faulkner 2015 I: 138);
Borghouts (1973: 114-115 fn.7). Many versions with whn=f have the wall (Gardiner sign O36) or falling wall
(O37) glyph as determinative, signifying “He Who Demolishes” (Mortexvar 2019).
274
For whm=f, TLA lemma 858145.
275
Blust (2023: 104-105 & 182-184). It is worth noting that the Egyptians did not have a word for “yellow”
until the New Kingdom, prior to which it was encompassed by “red” and/or “gold” (Barbotin 2014: 24).
276
Faulkner (2015 I: 138).
277
In the New Kingdom cognate to this spell, Book of the Dead Spell 108, the water component has been made
explicit and the snake atop the mountain confirms its rainbow-serpent-dragon nature when it “swallow[s] up
seven cubits of the great waters” (Faulkner 1985: 101).
278
Bickel (1998: 46).
279
Stemmler-Harding (2016).
280
Faulkner (2015 II: 109).
281
TLA lemma 115800.
282
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 98). For an identification of the “Winding Canal” of the Pyramid Texts with the
Milky Way (Abdel-Hadi & Yehia 2008: 338).
283
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 102-106).
284
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 101-102).
285
Oppenheim (1965: 141-142); Wiggermann (1992: 166).
286
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 104-106).
287
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 104).
288
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 109).
289
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 110).
290
Morenz (2004: 119).
291
Bickel (1998: 43-48).
292
Bickel (1998: 43).
293
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lernaean_Hydra_Getty_Villa_83.AE.346.jpg, licence
CC BY-SA 3.0.
294
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zodiaque_de_Dend%C3%A9ra_-
_Mus%C3%A9e_du_Louvre_Antiquit%C3%A9s_Egyptiennes_D_38_;_E_13482.jpg.
295
TLA lemmas 98510 & 98520.
296
Edfou VII: 21.11-13, cited in Kemboly (2010: 329).
297
Edfou VII: 21.14-22.1, cited in Kemboly (2010: 329).
298
Wilkinson (2003: 218); Hart (2005: 12-13).
299
Blair (2022: 71-76).
300
Blair (2022: 76); Leitz (2002 II: 115).
301
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Early_Ammit.jpg.
302
Faulkner (1985: 34 fig. & 190); Wilkinson (2003: 218); Hart (2005: 12-13). Hereafter, spells from the Book
of the Dead will be prefixed BD (e.g. for this spell, “BD 125”).
303
Wilkinson (2003: 218); Hart (2005: 12-13).
304
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BD_Hunefer_cropped_1.jpg.
305
Gad (2021); Karlova (2021: 288-292). As a counterweight to the increasingly negative image of Seth, “the
tradition of positive perception of Seth continued – his veneration as a solar god and a serpent fighter, acting
as a protector of Ra from the serpent Apophis; however, now these aspects appear at the periphery of the
Egyptian cult system. This tradition dates back to the period of Ramessid rule, when the qualities of Seth as
a god-protector and a god capable of repelling a threat were decisive.”
306
Blust (2023: 67-76). Given that Seth has disruptive traits similar to Apophis, Andreas Schweitzer
perceptively sees his recruitment to this role as an instance of similia similibus curantur, or “like cures like”
(Schweitzer 2010: 141). Similar sentiments are expressed (but articulated less directly) by Frandsen (2000:
24-25).
307
Zandee (1963: 152).
308
Gardiner signs S40-41 (Walker 2010: 7).
116
309
Piankoff ( 1957:75 Fig. 54).
310
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Set_speared_Apep.jpg.
311
Faulkner (2015 III: 143); my italics for emphasis.
312
Faulkner (2015 III: 154); my italics for emphasis.
313
Faulkner (2015 III: 188); my italics for emphasis.
314
In CT VII: 332f there is no logographic stroke where the lizard glyph (Gardiner sign I1) is used, and one
witness (B1L) even preserves the plural strokes of Hr.w.
315
TLA lemma 500878; Ignatov (2017: 15). The epithet is not otherwise known for Seth and may merely refer to
the many different shapes that thunderclouds can assume. As we shall see in Section 9, it is later applied to a
five-headed ouroboros in the 6th Hour of the Amduat.
316
Blust (2023: 68-71 & 76).
317
Leitz (2002 III: 293-294 & V: 259-260); Wilkinson (2003: 115); Hart (2005: 93-94).
318
Karlova (2016); Gad (2021: 47 fns.5-6; 80 Figs. 3 & 4).
319
Karlova (2023).
320
Karlova (2023). Similarly, Gad (2021: 48 fn.8; 81 Fig. 6).
321
Gad (2021: 48 fn.9; 81 Fig. 7).
322
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HibisSeth.jpg, licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
323
Bagnall et al. (2015: Fig. 15), image online at https://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/oasis-
city/chapter1.xhtml#figure15, licence CC BY-NC 4.0.
324
Blust (2023: 73).
325
In contrast, the rainbow spectrum seems to have stayed with the draco standard in the late Roman empire:
“The standard soon became, as with the draconari, a symbol of power, probably because of its exotic and
colourful appearance. In almost all the descriptions of the draco standard cited above, it is said to be
multicoloured, especially with purple – the colour associated with emperors – and with strings attached to
the body so it would appear alive in the wind” (Delia 2020: 205).
326
Allen (1974: 46 & 261). Note that Hr.y-ry.t could more prosaically be translated as “he who is in charge of
the inks” [of the scribes], and that Faulkner translates “colors” as “partisans” (Faulkner 1985: 60).
327
Blust (2023: 74).
328
Faulkner (1962: 211); Kenning (2002); Podgórski (2010). As befits the heirs of rainbow serpents, this term
can also applied to snakes, including Apophis (Walker 2010: 7 & 14).
329
Faulkner (2007: 314).
330
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indra_(6124606719).jpg.
331
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Totem_(6157924770).jpg, licence CC BY 2.0. The right
wing of the bird (left of photo), much of which was beyond the boundary of the original image, has here
been restored digitally using the other wing.
332
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Namgis_(Native_American)._Thunderbird_Transformation_Mask,
_19th_century_cropped.jpg, licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
333
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_-
_Tout%C3%A2nkhamon,_le_Tr%C3%A9sor_du_Pharaon_-
_Pendentif_au_faucon_portant_le_disque_solaire_-_001-gradient.jpg.
334
Weeks (2005: 460-463).
335
Hart (2005: 102).
336
Barbotin (2014: 27); my translation from the French.
337
Weeks (2005: 385).
338
Blust (2023: 117).
339
Brunner‑Traut (1985: 77); Meinardus (2000: 83-85); Georganteli (2010: 111-112); Turner (2012: 23);
Graham (2021: 71-72, incl. Fig. 4).
340
Brunner‑Traut (1985: 74-75); Cruz‑Uribe (2009: 208 & 224-226).
341
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horus_horseman-E_4850-IMG_4871-gradient.jpg,
licence CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
342
Cruz‑Uribe (2009: 208 & 224-226).
117
343
xrw qri, “voice of a storm” (Ockinga 2012: 140, line 5). Usually rendered “thunder” by translators, but could
also refer to the howling of wind and lashing of rain, etc.
344
Graham (2017).
345
Online at https://pixlr.com/upsell/?next=https://pixlr.com/image-generator/.
346
Barbotin (2014: 24); Abbas (2016: 51); Ignatov (2017: 17-18).
347
Blust (2023: 106-107). Something similar obtains with the unicorn, which is reputed to hide a carbuncle (a
red gemstone with a smooth convex face) at the base of its horn (Jung 1968: §552).
348
As noted previously by H. Fisher (Ignatov 2017: 20).
349
As noted previously by Golenischeff, the manuscript’s discoverer (Ignatov 2017: 19 & 21).
350
Blust (2023: 174). So too for the wonambi (= wanampi) of Central Australia (Blust 2023: 76).
351
Ignatov (2017: 17).
352
Ignatov (2017: 21) reviews the discussion over whether the snake-deity had a human head.
353
Blust (2000: 520 Table 1); Blust (2023: 114).
354
Common name: “black-necked spitting cobra” (Animalia n.d.).
355
Méndez (2020: 13, 36 & 78).
356
Simpson (2003: 49).
357
Blust (2023: 199-200).
358
Blust (2023: 200).
359
Wilkinson (2003: 227); Hart (2005: 161); Hornung & Abt (2007: 361).
360
Wilkinson (2003: 225-226); Hart (2005: 135).
361
For those in the Book of Gates, see Méndez (2020: 36-46).
362
Echoes of this concept seem to persist in alchemy, mainly in the form of salamanders “frolicking in fire”
(Jung 1968: Fig. 138).
363
The snake is a cobra, iar.t, and thus grammatically feminine. In the illustration in the tomb of Horemheb, the
cobra’s hood bears the symbol of the goddess Neith (Hornung & Abt 2014: 225).
364
Hornung & Abt (2014: 225-227).
365
TLA lemma 43790.
366
Morenz (2004: 205).
367
“Besides the idea of the prima materia, that of water (aqua permanens) and that of fire (ignis noster) play an
important part. Although these two elements are antagonistic and even constitute a typical pair of opposites,
they are yet one and the same according to the testimony of the [alchemical] authors” (Jung 1968: §336).
368
This modernised reading is taken from McLean (2000b: Lesson 22). A similar translation from the same
author is publicly available at McLean (n.d.h).
369
Online at https://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/george-ripley/ripley-scroll-beinecke-version-3/.
370
The yellow phase (Section 3) is no longer present in its own right, having been subsumed into the red phase
in accordance with the sulphur–mercury theory of metals (Jung 1968: §333; Roberts 2019: 187). The
remainder of the poem, as modernised by McLean (2000b: Lesson 22; n.d.h), reads: “Thus ye shall go to
putrefaction /And bring the serpent to redemption / First he shall be black as a crow / And down in his den
shall lie full low / Swelling as a toad that lies on the ground / Bursting with bladders sitting so round / They
shall to burst and lie full plain / And thus with craft the serpent is slain / He shall show colours here many a
one / And turn as white as whale’s bone / With the water that he was in / Wash him clear from his sin / And
let him drink a little and a light / And that shall make him fair and white / The which whiteness be abiding /
Lo here is a very full finishing / Of the white stone and the red / Lo here is the very true deed.”
371
Watkins (1995: 455-456).
372
Watkins (1995: 456).
373
Hornung & Abt (2007: 344 & 346); Abbas (2016: 18).
374
Hornung & Abt (2007: 327-328).
375
In KV 14, this scene sits in the lowest register, and the presence of a fluorescent light tube at bottom left
resulted in an extreme exposure gradient across the main photograph
376
Piccione (1990: 50-51); Wilkinson (2003: 223).
377
Piccione (1990: 43-44).

118
378
Piccione (1990: 45). Compare the later “Path of Fire” that cuts through the three registers in the 4th Hour of
the Amduat (Hawass 2006: 118).
379
Piccione (1990: 46). No doubt Jung would have seen this as a metaphor for individuation, given that he
wrote: “We can hardly escape the feeling that the unconscious process moves spiral-wise round a centre,
gradually getting closer, while the characteristics of the centre grow more and more distinct” (Jung 1968:
§325). Elsewhere, he elaborated: “The way to the goal seems chaotic and interminable at first, and only
gradually do the signs increase that it is leading anywhere. The way is not straight but appears to go round in
circles. More accurate knowledge has proved it to go in spirals: the dream-motifs always return after certain
intervals to definite forms, whose characteristic it is to define a centre. And as a matter of fact the whole
process revolves about a central point or some arrangement round a centre, which may in certain
circumstances appear even in the initial dreams. As manifestations of unconscious processes the dreams
rotate or circumambulate round the centre, drawing closer to it as the amplifications increase in distinctness
and in scope” (Jung 1968: §34).
380
Roblee (2018: 138-140).
381
Piccione (1990: 48).
382
Piccione (1990: 48).
383
Piccione (1990: 51-52).
384
Online at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547390.
385
Hawass (2006: 122); Hornung & Abt (2007: 200).
386
Hornung & Abt (2007: 200).
387
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snake_(mehen)_game,_Egypt,_Old_Kingdom,_Dynasties_3-
6,_c._2750-2250_BC,_alabaster,_pigment_-_Oriental_Institute_Museum,_University_of_Chicago_-
_DSC07928.JPG.
388
Hornung & Abt (2007: 316-317).
389
Weeks (2005: 327).
390
Hornung & Abt (2007: 424-427).
391
Online at https://www.flickr.com/photos/manna4u/36088681790, licence CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
392
This is clearly visible in the version in the tomb of Thutmose III and Rameses VI (Hawass 2006: 123;
Hornung & Abt 2007: 200).
393
McLean (n.d.i).
394
Gaber (2017: 39-45).
395
Gaber (2017: 45-47 & 51).
396
Gaber (2017: 41-42, 44, 46 & 50).
397
Gaber (2017: 44-45 & 50).
398
Gaber (2017: 40-41, 43-44, 46, 48 & 51).
399
Global Egyptian Museum (1998) ; Gaber (2017: 49 & Taf. 6).
400
Altmann-Wendling (2023).
401
Altmann-Wendling (2023: 46 & 49-50).
402
McLean (n.d.i).
403
McLean (2000a: 126-127).
404
Landgráfová (2019: 64-66); Altmann-Wendling (2023: 46 & 46-48).
405
Altmann-Wendling (2023: 46 & 49-50).
406
Hornung (1999: 140) calls them “antelope heads” without remarking the presence of a third horn.
407
Miller (2023).
408
The central “unicorn horn” is especially clear in the vignette near the entrance to the tomb of Merenptah (KV
8), for which an image is online at https://thebanmappingproject.com/media/21436. Note that three-horned
bovids appear in the “botanic Garden” of Thutmosis III in Karnak, where Egyptologists consider them to
represent teratological abnormalities (Beaux 1990: 279).
409
Altmann-Wendling (2023: 51).

119
410
Four inverted antelope heads (each with ears and paired horns, but no third horn) also appear as symbols of
disorder above Osiris in the unfinished sketch of the Judgement Hall in the 5th Hour of the Book of Gates, as
depicted in the tomb of Horemheb (KV 57) (Hawass 2006: 158 & 162-164).
411
Similarly, the unicorn was a valid symbol of evil in Late Antique Egypt and beyond. For example, the 2nd-4th
century Alexandrian text known as the Physiologus Graecus, which was heavily influenced by pharaonic
conceptions of Egyptian animals (Šedinová 2013), says of the unicorn that “‘it is a swift-running animal,
having one horn, and evilly disposed towards man’ (μνησίκακον δέ ủπάρχει ἐν ἀνθρώποις). And St. Basil
says: ‘And take heed unto thyself, O man, and beware of the unicorn, who is the Demon. For he plotteth evil
against man, and he is cunning in evil-doing’” (Jung 1968: §525).
412
Hornung (1999: 140).
413
Miller (2023).
414
Online at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547524.
415
Landgráfová (2019: 62); Altmann-Wendling (2023: 50-51). The (mainly astronomical) ceiling of this temple
abounds with all manner of snake chimerae, including a snake with four forward-facing legs and two bird-
like heads at one end plus four rearward-facing legs and two human heads atop cobra hoods at the other.
Also present is a representation of Dedwen as a snake with a falcon’s head, an embodiment of the Nubian
incense-god known from the tomb of Iufaa (Landgráfová & Janák 2017: 117-118, Snake III).
416
Altmann-Wendling (2023: 50). Similarly Landgráfová (2019: 60-61).
417
Landgráfová (2019: 64-66); Altmann-Wendling (2023: 51-54).
418
Blust (2023: 21, 99 & 112).
419
Blust (2023: 21, 35, 99, 105, 112-113, 195-196 & 271).
420
Wilkinson (2003: 223).
421
Faulkner (2007: 203).
422
The rainbow’s own dual sexuality, which is discussed in the next section, may underpin or result from this
ability.
423
Blust (2023: 213-214). The association of both gold and faeces with the end of the rainbow may be another
instance of category reversal (Blust 2023: 218-219).
424
Hornung & Abt (2007: 368).
425
Hornung & Abt (2007: 368-370).
426
Interestingly, this conforms to the paradigm whereby (re)birth from the male is almost always mediated by
the head (Zeitlin 1978: 169).
427
Piccione (1990: 50).
428
For example, in the 16th-century Splendor Solis and Rosarium philosophorum, or Petrus Bonus’s Pretiosa
margarita novella McLean (n.d.j-l).
429
McLean (n.d.e). Our Fig. 16 shows the very first step in the process: death and dismemberment of the king,
prior to burial and putrefaction of his body-parts (Trismosin 1920: 33); another version of this emblem is
available online at McLean (n.d.r).
430
Schweitzer (2010: 84 & 122).
431
McLean (n.d.e).
432
Jung (1968: §43); Beyer (2020). Note that some alchemical texts, such the 16th-century Rosarium
philosophorum, postulate additional steps (Rosarium Emblems 18-20) to fully complete the Work after the
fusion of King and Queen (McLean n.d.m).
433
As in the Rosarium philosophorum (McLean n.d.n).
434
Barnstone & Meyer (2003: 393).
435
Others have related both the Egyptian sun-god’s Netherworld journey and the spiritual dimension of
European alchemy to the individual’s struggle with the human unconscious (Abt & Hornung 2003;
Schweitzer 2010: 3, 13 & passim) but largely without connecting the first two directly, structurally, and in
terms of specific correspondences in imagery, as will be done in this and the next paragraph.
436
de Givry (1973: 361 & Fig. 341); McLean (n.d.e).
437
Alamy Image ID: D95W2X; Order OY91507943; Invoice IY04273958.
438
McLean, Adam (1998-2004).
439
Alamy Image ID: MC6P1Y; Order OY90850149, Invoice IY04207193; colours adjusted digitally to those
standard for Rebis (e.g. as in Emblem 10 at McLean (n.d.t)).
120
440
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Musaeum_Hermeticum_1678_VI._Clavis_AQ34_Key_6.tif.
441
Other versions with modern colouring may be seen online at McLean (1999) and at https://www.imago-
images.com/bild/st/0080790154/w.jpg.
442
Žabkar (1968: 12 & 37). Contra Cavalli (2016: 59), the conjunction of Ra and Osiris is not visible in the
form of a solar eclipse; as explained in Section 5, such eclipses would have been interpreted as the sun being
devoured by Apophis.
443
Schweitzer (2010: 121).
444
Cavalli (2016: 63); Gregory (2022: 19-20).
445
Jung (1967: §157).
446
Žabkar (1968: 12).
447
Hornung (1999: 37 & 62).
448
El-Deen (2010); Cavalli (2016: 61, 63 & 68), with the qualification that Osiris is not really a lunar god.
449
McLean (2000a: 161).
450
McLean (2000a: 161-162); suggestions of the ancient Egyptian parallel is my own. I have contracted the
phrase “spiritual purification of matter” in McLean’s original to “spiritualisation of matter” in the quote as
this makes for an easier segue to the Egyptian situation. This substitution causes no change in meaning, since
McLean named the same process “The Spiritualising of earthly forces” on the preceding page of his lesson,
where it provides the title of the previous section and serves as counterpart to the title of the section before
that, “The embodying of cosmic forces.” The text in which these currents crystallise most clearly as
complementary processes – and on whose emblems McLean is commenting – is the 18th-century
Hermaphroditische Sonn- und Mond-Kind, which even in its title concerns itself with the sun/day and
moon/night. Similarly, the Egyptian parallel concerns itself with the diurnal and nocturnal voyage of the sun-
god.
451
Quotation from McLean (n.d.o), which does not mention the Egyptian parallel. Authorship of the Ripley
Scroll, which we encountered earlier in this section, is also attributed to George Ripley, although it may be a
later summary of his beliefs by others; McLean (2000a: 138). A modern-language version of Ripley’s
“Twelve Gates” poem is available online at McLean (n.d.p).
452
McLean (2000a: 97 & 103).
453
Quotation, for the Amduat, from Hornung (1999: 37); an equivalent statement, for the Book of Gates, is at
Hornung (1999: 62). In contrast to the situation for Hr.wy=fy, which we will meet in the next section, I am
not aware of any explicit depictions captioned bA.wy=fy.
454
Žabkar (1968: 13-14); Hart (2005: 48-49).
455
McLean (n.d.e). The phoenix has a counterpart – called fenghuang – that is important in Chinese mythology;
this chimeric bird is typically considered the (female) mate of the (male) dragon. Its body contains the five
fundamental colors: black, white, green, yellow and red, which happen to coincide with the five colours
discussed earlier (Section 3) for the complete diurnal cycle and the alchemical magnum opus (Nozedar 2006:
37; Hu 2019: 34-36).
456
Sq7Sq, CT IV: 412; te Velde (1967: 70).
457
Blust (2023: 101-103 & 178-182).
458
Gaber (2017: 47-48 & 51).
459
Gaber (2017: 47).
460
Gaber (2017: 47-48).
461
McDonald (1996: 50).
462
Cavalli (2016: 50).
463
Cavalli (2016: 51 Fig. 2).
464
McLean (2000a: 38-40).
465
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fenix_(phoenix)_-_Der_naturen_bloeme_-
_Jacob_van_Maerlant_-_KB_KA_16_-_083v_b1.jpg#file.
466
Hornung & Abt (2007: 291).
467
Blust (2023: 212-213).
468
Steiner (2011: 77-78).

121
469
Within the two spell sequences specified in the main text, the proto-Canaanite inclusions occur in PT 235,
236, 281 & 286.
470
Steiner (2011: 28).
471
One labelled “Foremost of the sky, Uniting faces,” occurs in the 10th Hour of the Amduat (Hornung & Abt
(2007: 298 & 311). Another, crowned on both heads and called “Marvel of the earth,” appears in the 10th
Hour of the Book of Gates (Hornung & Abt 2014: 344). This same hour features bidirectional snakes with
more than two heads; for example, a foul-smelling one called Shemty (“He who walks”), who patrols on 16
human legs and eats the heads of those within one of the Gates (Hornung & Abt 2014: 342-343). The same
hour also features a bidirectional reptilian (and ally of Apophis) called SsSs, a crocodile whose tail ends in a
snake-head (Hornung & Abt 2014: 354; Kemboly 2010: 277).
472
Hornung & Abt (2007: 131).
473
Steiner (2011: 18-19).
474
Hornung & Abt (2007: 132).
475
Steiner (2011: 18-19).
476
Steiner (2011: 18); image, Hornung & Abt (2007: 131).
477
Steiner (2011: 23 & 28).
478
A phrase translated as “Rīr-Rīr of the sea” occurs twice in PT 286 (Steiner 2011: 53 incl. fn. 152) but the
relevant noun (S) more usually denotes a lake or a pool (Faulkner 1962: 260; TLA lemma 854557).
479
Steiner (2011: 40). There are also Netherworld Snake Deities/Demons with two forward-facing heads, e.g.
the Basilisk (Section 11).
480
Steiner (2011: 31-32); similarly, (2011: 80).
481
Blust (2023: 210).
482
Topmann (2010); Allen (2015: 364); Faulkner (1985: 60); Gad (2021: 60-61 & 74-75). On the equivalence of
rrk and Apophis, see Bickel (1998: 44 fn.8).
483
Steiner (2011: 28).
484
Steiner (2011: 18).
485
Borghouts (2007: 21-23).
486
Steiner (2011: 15 fn.2). Also tantalising is the fact that the standard orthography of rrk consists of two mouth
glyphs (Gardiner sign D21; monoliteral r) followed by a basket glyph (Gardiner sign V31, monoliteral k)
(TLA lemma 95410; Leitz 2002 IV: 701), a sequence which could be read paronomastically as “Your two
mouths.” Rerek’s serpent nature is specified by a snake determinative (Gardiner sign I14); however, it is
never pictured or described as having more than one head.
487
Hawass (2006: 154).
488
Hornung & Abt (2014: 120-121). Paradoxically, the text later indicates that it is Re who has given birth to the
hours, and that it is the hours who swallow and destroy what Heririet has given birth to (which in this case
may be afterbirth, or something other than themselves); see Hornung & Abt (2014: 122-123).
489
TLA lemma 109120.
490
Hornung & Abt (2014: 120 & 121 fig.).
491
TLA lemma 140990; Hornung & Abt (2014: 120 & 122).
492
Méndez (2020: 60).
493
Piccione (1990: 45 Fig. 2 & 46 Fig. 3).
494
Tarasenko (2010).
495
Piccione (1990: 45 Fig. 1); Tarasenko (2010: Fig. 3), in colour.
496
Piccione (1990: 44, 45 Fig. 1 & 51); in this last location, read “CT 758” for “CT 658.”
497
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mehen,_egyptian_snake_game_-_rmo_leiden,_5th-
6th_dynasty_2575-2150bc.jpg, licence CC BY-SA 2.0.
498
Piccione (1990: 50).
499
Schweitzer (2010: 139).
500
Van der Sluijs & Peratt (2009: 17).
501
Piccione (1990: 50-52).
502
Piccione has attributed this vignette using a different division structure to the one used in this paper; my
emendation in square brackets corrects the attribution in line with the hour-division scheme used by
122
 Hornung & Abt (2014), whose structure is used throughout the present paper. “His Two Faces” is introduced
in the 10th Hour, bearing the heads of Horus and Seth; there, he stands on the back of a double-headed
sphinx. The corresponding text reads: “This god rises for Re. Then ‘His Double Faces’ enters (back) into this
god, after Re has passed by him” (Hornung & Abt 2014: 339). He features again only in the 11th Hour, in the
setting described in the main text. Compare the first sentence of the quotation from the 10th Hour with “The
Great One rises” in PT 570 (Section 3), which – as we have seen – seems to describe the appearance of a
rainbow.
503
Now specified using the Late Egyptian term Smr.wt in place of the Middle Egyptian pD.wt (Hornung & Abt
2014: 391).
504
Robins (2008: 21); Peck (2015).
505
Méndez (2020: 76) suggests that the two bows might symbolise the Nine Bows, the traditional enemies of
Egypt, but this makes no sense in light of the accompanying text. Similarly, the idea that the bows refer to tA
st.y – Nubia – finds no support in the text. For an alchemical emblem containing two symmetrically-placed
archery bows (for which rainbow symbolism is not suspected), see Fig. 20.
506
Even if “His Two Faces” is Re’s mystery, as Hornung suggests here, he is not identical to or even an
embodiment of Re, since in the 10th Hour the same figure stands on the back of a god in the form of a
double-headed sphinx, with the caption (already given in an earlier note): “This god rises for Re. Then ‘His
Double Faces’ enters (back) into this god, after Re has passed by him” (Hornung & Abt 2014: 339). Given
the narration and image of the 11th Hour, plus the fact that Mehen has long been considered bicephalic, it is
probably reasonable to follow Piccione in understanding “His Two Faces” as a form of Mehen. It must also
represent a compounding of opposites, as occurs in the union of Horus with Seth (te Velde 1967: 68-72).
507
Hornung & Abt (2014: 391).
508
Beaux (2010: 63); my translation from the French. For this observation Beaux cites Groff (1896: 245-246),
as republished in a compendium of Groff’s collected works (Groff 1908). We have already encountered this
optical phenomenon in connection with the red glow at the eastern mountain of BAXw in CT 160 (Section 3),
although there the effect was attributed not to Mehen but to his antithesis, Apophis.
509
Piccione (1990: 51).
510
Left and right are given from the perspective of the viewer, not that of the standing figure.
511
Hornung & Abt (2014: 390).
512
Van der Sluijs & Peratt (2009: 17 & 21); Roblee (2018: 142-148); Assmann (2019: 30-32). These
understandings of the symbol were post-pharaonic developments; for ancient Egyptians, the ouroboros “was
primarily associated with the idea of a protective enclosure, conceived of as a divine force functioning on
multiple levels: cosmic, solar, funereal, and individual” (Reemes 2015: Abstract).
513
Blust (2023: 259). Others have proposed a different kind of solar anomaly as an inspiration for the ouroboros
(van der Sluijs & Peratt 2009: 21-28).
514
Van der Sluijs & Peratt (2009: 20). The cosmic ocean was itself sometimes identified as a snake (van der
Sluijs & Peratt 2009: 9-13).
515
To provide the observed colour seqence at dawn, the notional “circular bow” would need to have blue/green
on the outside and red on the inside, like the secondary element of a double rainbow.
516
And also, in an ordinary standing pose with his arms by his sides, in the 2nd Hour of the Amduat, where only
his name is provided in the caption (Hornung & Abt 2007: 54). For the full list of occurrences of “His Two
Faces,” see Leitz (2002 V: 306).
517
Hart (2005: 11).
518
Hornung (1999: 78-81 Fig. 42).
519
Hornung (1999: 78).
520
Chinese depictions date back to the Shang-Zhou dynasty (ca. 1150-950 BCE); Cheak (2013: 39-40).
521
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serpiente_alquimica.jpg.
522
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_glory_and_Spectre_of_the_Brocken_from_GGB_on_07-05-
2011.jpg, licence CC BY-SA 3.0.
523
Hornung & Abt (2014: 336-341).
524
This is actually a parody of the image in Fig. 85, one in which Rebis is now the Luciferic androgyne rather
than the Mercurial one (McLean n.d.q). This makes no difference to its use as a visual comparandum for the
top panel of the figure.
123
525
Online at https://image.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/iiif/MS-GERMAN-00001-000-
00014.jp2/full/full/0/default.jpg, licence CC BY-NC 4.0.
526
Frandsen (2000: 32). Frandsen (2000: 21) explains “that Iaau has a double ‘nature’, that the primordial Iaau
embodied the productive or creative as well as the barren, irrevocable non-existence of the world reversed.
Thus viewed, there would be a ‘good’ Iaau and an ‘evil’ Iaau […] A being of that kind would be entirely
consistent with the view of non-existence, as worked out by Hornung.”
527
Faulkner (2007; 61 n.1); Kemboly (2010: 145). The identification of Iaau as two fighters appeared previously
in the block-quote from Kemboly in Section 3, but the Horus/Seth identification was not articulated at that
time.
528
In that, he has parallels both in the god Antiwy (Antaios), chief local god of the 10th Nome of Upper Egypt,
and in the person of the king (te Velde 1967: 68-72). In respect of the latter, recall that PT 570 seems to
describe a rainbow as being “given birth by the sky on the arms of Shu and Tefnut, on the two arms of king
N” (Section 3). Additionally, it is tempting to connect the composite Horus-and-Seth figure with Shesmu
(5sm.w) in BD 17, a member of the tribunal who judges the dead; he is identified primarily with Seth and
then, alternatively, with Horus: “He has two heads, one bearing Maat and the other Isfet. He gives Isfet to
whom does it and Maat to whom comes with it” (BD 17, lines 63-64; Faulkner 1985: 48; Kemboly 2010:
290). A serpent connection is consistent with Shesmu’s further identification as Apophis (BD 17, line 63),
while a connection to the dawn (Section 3) is suggested by his final identification as Nefertem (BD 17, line
65; Wilkinson 2003: 133-34; Hart 2005: 99).
529
“The theme of two alchemical natures as complimentary expressions of one underlying pan-unity would
dominate alchemical symbolism right down to the early modern period” (Cheak 2013: 39).
530
In other words, they have resolved the vertical dimension of the chimera into its component elements while
leaving the horizontal dimension unresolved.
531
For other examples, see McLean (n.d.q).
532
This Aker-sphinx is a tripartite chimera that combines lion, falcon and human elements, so it is technically
not a dragon, but we have already seen that other animals can sometimes be “behaviorally indistinguishable
from a dragon” (Blust 2023: 112) and noted the ways in which the lion/sphinx and dragon overlap (note
243). In this case, additional snake elements are vicariously present because Aker is supposed to contain the
coils of Apophis after the latter’s dismemberment by Isis (Wilkinson 2003: 176; Hart 2005: 11). In general,
Aker acts similarly to Mehen in grasping or restraining the various serpent-demons of the Netherworld (PT
314 (§504) & 385 (§676); Wilkinson 2003: 176). In any case, the visually absent serpentine component of
the 10th Hour image is dominant in the cognate image of the 11th Hour, where it is supplied six-fold by
Mehen of the Uraeus-serpents.
533
Schweitzer (2010). This is the English translation of his 1994 book, Seelenführer durch den verborgenen
Raum.
534
Roberts (2019: 176-271). While the book is lyrically written and beautifully illustrated, Roberts’ esoteric
leanings and partisan promotion of “a pre-established thesis around a divine feminine alchemical tradition
tied to copper” have justifiably attracted scholarly criticism (Escolano-Poveda 2022: 84-87).
535
De Givry (1973: 361 & Fig. 341); McLean (n.d.e); McLean (2000a: 159).
536
McLean (2000b: Lesson 22). In the ancient Egyptian books of the Netherworld, aggressive serpents are
similarly slain to facilitate the various steps of regeneration. Apophis is the obvious example, but there are
others; for example, in the middle register of the 5th Hour of the Book of Gates, a huge and dangerous snake
called nwDy is restrained as Re arrives; then “The serpent is also destroyed to allow the Sungod’s
transformation and rebirth” (Méndez 2020: 54).
537
Both the bidirectional serpent and the ouroboros represent a unity in which head/tail polarity is abolished,
and are typically protective (Table 1); Apophis in ouroboros configuration is no longer a threat, as explained
in Section 5. (The same idea underpins the spherical shape of the alchemist’s vas Hermetis or vas rotundum,
in which “the chaos of the unleashed opposites was to be tamed by the harmonious influence of the
roundness of the vessel;” Schweitzer 2010: 27.) However, if – as in Figs. 69 & 70 – Rebis stands atop a fire-
breathing dragon of conventional type, that creature represents the vanquished prima materia; de Givry
(1973: 361 & Fig. 341).
538
Cf. the rainbow as the first Appearance-of-Land in Section 3. Rebis arising at the end of the rubedo can also
be seen as a sunrise, since it is often allegorised as the rising of a phoenix – a solar bird – from the ashes at
the end of the Great Work, which itself represents the solar cycle (Section 3) (McLean n.d.e; van Den Broek
1971: 223-281).

124
539
McLean (n.d.e). This “solid ground” is actually reified as a pair of stones above the dragon in Fig. 85. The
key element common to all such representations is that Rebis stands upon or above the dragon, dominating it
and being supported by it. If the dragon is in circular configuration, Rebis should no longer float inside the
potential of the creative womb/egg but rather should stand outside and above it as its master, as seen in Fig.
86. For a similar emergence see Jung (1968: Fig. 13), where the red and white rose symbolise the Red King
and White Queen, respectively, who fuse to form the androgyne or red-and-white rose (flos sapientum,
flower of the wise).
540
Blust (2000: 520); Blust (2023: 94-96).
541
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Snake_(mehen)_game,_Egypt,_Old_Kingdom,_Dynasties_3-
6,_c._2750-2250_BC,_alabaster,_pigment_-_Oriental_Institute_Museum,_University_of_Chicago_-
_DSC07928.JPG.
542
Online at https://image.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/iiif/MS-GERMAN-00001-000-
00015.jp2/full/full/0/default.jpg, licence CC BY-NC 4.0.
543
McLean (2000a: 41).
544
Online at
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Title_page_De_Alchimia_opvscvla_complvra_vetervm_philosoph
orum_1550.jpg.
545
Hart (2005: 161).
546
Mundkur (1983: 80 & 81 Fig. 3a); Golding (2013: 200).
547
Hornung & Abt (2014: 387); Méndez (2020: 75).
548
Hornung & Abt (2007: 121).
549
An adjacent netherworld snake-deity with two heads and no wings is also labelled Nehebukau, an
identification which has broader support (Hawass 2006: 119; Hornung & Abt 2007: 122; Schweitzer 2010:
92-93).
550
Hornung & Abt (207: 121).
551
Online at https://www.flickr.com/photos/manna4u/36071235883/in/album-72157687439529835/, licence CC
BY-NC-SA 2.0. The figure shows a detail from the original photo.
552
Hornung (1990: 83 Fig. 45 legend); Hawass (2006: 121); Hornung & Abt (2007: 138-139 & 168);
Schweitzer (2010: 110).
553
Hornung & Abt (2007: 168).
554
Landgráfová & Janák (2017: 116 & Pl 22.2).
555
Landgráfová & Janák (2017: Pl 22.2).
556
Allen (1974: 74); Faulkner (1985: 86); Faulkner (2007: 130 & 313).
557
Landgráfová & Janák (2017: 116).
558
Landgráfová & Janák (2017: Pl 22.2).
559
Faulkner (1985: 86, bottom left-hand figure).
560
Faulkner (1985: 84).
561
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nehebkau_-_Spell-87_-Book_of_the_Dead.jpg. The
snake has been misidentified in the title of the image file as Nehebukau.
562
Wilkinson (2003: 224-226); Hart (2005: 135-137).
563
Blust (2023: 109). The appetite of the dragon for humans in general (exemplified in Greek myth by, for
example, the story of Cadmus; Delia 2020: 199) was anticipated in the earlier discussion of Ammut’s dietary
habits (Section 6).
564
Blust (2023: 109-111).
565
Zecchi (2010: 2).
566
Faulkner (2007: 99). The euphemistic “owner of seed” has been replaced with the more forceful “lord of
semen” in the final line, following Allen (2015: 64).
567
TLA lemma 47420.
568
Wilkinson (2003: 219); Hart (2005: 100-101); Faulkner (2007: 99 n.4).
569
Hart (2005: 100).
570
Gardiner (1957: 546).

125
571
Bojowald (2021).
572
Blust (2023: 178-182).
573
Bleeker (1975: 140).
574
To do so would ignore contraindications such as the late emergence of Neith’s serpent embodiment and
complications such as her role as the mother of Re as well as Apophis (Bleeker 1975: 140).
575
El-Shamy (1980: 159-161 & 279-281).
576
This legend may also rely to some extent on the Old Testament disparagement of the Egyptian king as a Nile-
dragon: “Thus says the Lord God: I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon sprawling in
the midst of its channels, saying, ‘My Nile is my own, I made it for myself;’” Ezek 29:3 (NRSV). Treating
the Egyptian king as a dragon probably represents a parody or polemical inversion of the Egyptian tendency
to equate a foreign ruler with Apophis (Lee 2023: 21).
577
El-Shamy (1980: 159), with additional information in the book’s Foreword (Dorson 1980: xxxi-xxxii).
578
El-Shamy (1980: 160).
579
Online at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MitDamsisOldChurchIcon.jpg, licence CC BY-SA 3.0.
580
Blust (2023: 189).
581
Leitz (2002 II: 269); Roblee (2018: 138).
582
Blust (2023: 14, 82-83, 110 & 264).
583
Blust (2023: 1 & 134-135).
584
Nevertheless, the Shipwrecked Sailor’s snake-deity has been compared with the Apophis-like snake in CT
160 (Goedicke 1980).
585
Blust (2023: 171-172).
586
Blust (2023: 274). Such an outcome is evident also in the ancient Near East, but seemingly not in China.
587
Blust (2021); Blust (2023:247-256).
588
Brunner‑Traut (1985: 72).
589
These were divine emblems and were seen as magically protective (Black & Green 1992: 166 & 177).
590
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 103 & 109).
591
Méndez (2020: 45 & 47); similarly (2020: 80).
592
E.g. Roblee (2018).
593
Jung (1968: §38-39); (1971: 228-231). From the former: “[T]he contents of the personal unconscious (i.e.,
the shadow) are indistinguishably merged with the archetypal contents of the collective unconscious and
drag the latter with them when the shadow is brought into consciousness. […] The psychological elucidation
of these images, which cannot be passed over in silence or blindly ignored, leads logically into the depths of
religious phenomenology. The history of religion in its widest sense (including therefore mythology,
folklore, and primitive psychology) is a treasure-house of archetypal forms from which the doctor can draw
helpful parallels and enlightening comparisons. […] Part II of this volume gives a large number of such
examples. The reader will be particularly struck by the numerous connections between individual dream
symbolism and medieval alchemy. This is not, as one might suppose, a prerogative of the case [i.e. patient]
in question, but a general fact which only struck me some ten years ago when first I began to come to grips
with the ideas and symbolism of alchemy.”
594
Jung (1968: Fig. 183).
595
Lajard (1837: 32-36); Lajard (1849: Pl. I, no. 1); Jung (1968: Fig. 183).
596
Lajard (1837: 100 & 106).
597
Lajard (1849: Pl. I, no. 1); online at https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8203#0019.
598
Lajard (1837: 32 & 34 fn.1). For the Egyptian origin of Chnoubis, see Dasen & Nagy (2019: 418).
599
Compare, for example, the gem’s outward-facing dragon-serpents with the similarly-configured brim of the
atef-crown in Piccione (1990: Fig. 1), as well as the outward-facing uraei of our Fig. 79.
600
Lajard (1837: 46-47).
601
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 96).
602
Bickel (1998: 43-48).
603
Steiner (2011).
604
Stemmler-Harding (2016: 104).

126
605
E.g. CT 414 (CT V: 244) says of Apophis that “a fire has come out of heaven into the cave of the rebel, […] a
flame is hurled (against him) from the house of Sepa” (Bickel 1998: 45 & 47).
606
“Positive treasure” excludes prisoners for torment or execution.
607
Hornung & Abt (2007: 340); Hawass (2006: 135). The Book of Gates ends with Osiris in circular form
encircling the Netherworld (Hornung & Abt 2014: 452-453).
608
Hornung (1990: 107). Hornung’s proposal is endorsed and amplified by Andreas Schweitzer, who writes:
“not wishing to consider anything to be entirely good or entirely evil, the Egyptian sages easily embraced all
kinds of complementary categories. They were too realistic not to see that out of evil, an ‘ouroboric’
protection can grow, a protection that brings forth new birth” (Schweitzer 2010: 98).
609
Méndez (2020: 59-61).
610
Reviewed by Lee (2023: 16).
611
Another possible example of intentional hybridisation would be Serapis, a fusion of multiple Hellenic and
Egyptian deities, who “is typically viewed as the ingenious creation of Ptolemy I Soter” (Murphy 2021: 29).
Similarly, Cavalli (2016: 58).
612
Hart (2005: 155).
613
Delia (2020: 206-209).
614
Delia (2020: 195 & 200-203).
615
Brunner‑Traut (1985: 74-75)
616
Hanauer (1907: 56-57); Brunner‑Traut (1985: 76-77); Meinardus (2000: 83-85); Cruz‑Uribe (2009: 208 &
224-226); Georganteli (2010: 111-112); Turner (2012: 23); Graham (2021: 71 & 72 Fig. 4).
617
Primary Egyptian literature: Faulkner (1937: 168); Simpson (2003: 48); Hornung & Abt (2007: 169).
Secondary/tertiary Egyptological literature: Mark (2017). Globally: Blust (2023: 82-83, 110, 119, 139, 149,
153-154, 158-159, 173, 185, 192, 199-200 & 206).
618
Schweitzer (2010: 111-112); Colman (2014); Borislow (2023).
619
In the same vein, see Leitz (1996: 399) for literature on Nehebukau as an enemy in snake form and his
identity with Apophis. Likewise, a snake in Divisions 1 and 3 of the Book of Caverns is called nHA Hr
(“Fierce of face”), a name used earlier in the Amduat and Book of Gates for Apophis, except that in Caverns
he is well-intentioned; in Division 3 he encircles and protects the ithyphallic Osiris, who is situated in the
third register below Aker (Piankoff 1941: 8; 1942: 26-27). So too in the Book of the Earth, where he is an
ally of Nut (Kemboly 2010: 280).
620
Meurer (2002: 278).
621
CT 1130 (CT VII: 462); Frandsen (2000: 16).
622
Faulkner (1985: 175). The sun-god may also assume the form of a dragon in the chamber of Sokar during his
nocturnal metamorphoses (Hornung & Abt 2007: 168; Méndez 2020: 73-77 & 81); see Fig. 93 and attendant
discussion in the main text.
623
Roblee (2018). In similar vein, Seth in the Pyramid Texts was closely identified with snakes, but by the New
Kingdom had become the principal guardian of Re against the serpent Apophis, only to become re-identified
in the Late Period with Apophis-like chaos-animals. On the Old Kingdom Seth–snake equivalence, see
Meurer (2002: 307-315).
624
Fontanella (2021a: 63).
625
Fontanella (2021b: 56).
626
This segue is especially cogent because alchemical considerations are thought to have influenced
Kandinsky’s later art. Commenting on an April 1940 oil study for Around the Circle, Megan Fontanella
(2021a: 64) notes that “Black, according to the artist, is the color against which all colors resonate most. In
contrast, the outer ring of the main circle is here revealed as a fiery red that, perhaps not coincidentally, has
associations with the concluding stages of alchemical transmutation.” Her explanatory endnote (Fontanella
(2021a: 67 n.17) reads: Sol niger (black sun) represents the first basic phase of the nigredo (blackening) –
the alchemical magnum opus (great work) – while rubedo (reddening) is the final major stage in an
alchemical transformation. […] Furthermore, the Red King (sun) and the White Queen (moon) are
considered alchemical allegories; their chemical union constitutes the joining of opposites to produce a
hybrid entity with greater power.”

127
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