The Garden of Eden Serpent

The Serpent is another aspect in our investigation into the god, I AM, - Khepra, Xepera, or Hepre.

To begin with it is worth noting this extract from The Book of the Dead. -

[THE CHAPTER OF] MAKING THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE SERPENT SATA. The Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, saith:- I am the serpent Sata whose years are infinite. I lie down dead. I am born daily. I am the serpent Sa-en-ta, the dweller in the uttermost parts of the earth. I lie down in death. I am born, I become new, I renew my youth every day.

Here is the same age old belief of death and rebirth, just as we found in the story of the Phoenix or Bennu bird.

Apep as the Egyptian Serpent God was known is described in a Touregypt page:

With the possible exception of Aten only during the Amarna Period, no single Egyptian god was considered to be really all powerful. Many lived with the threat of destruction, and even one of the greatest of Egyptian gods faced such threats every single night. Apophis (Egyptian Apep) was the great adversary of the sun god, Re and was the very embodiment of the powers of dissolution, darkness and non-being. Hence, he was a sort of void or "black hole" forcing those he swallowed into that non-existence which the Egyptians feared so greatly.

Being completely outside of the natural world, he was believed to require no nourishment other than to "breathe" his own shouts. He was a huge serpent who was thought to have existed at the beginning of time in the waters of primeval chaos prior to creation and his power was so great that it was thought that he would continue to exist in an endlessly malevolent cycle of attack, defeat and resurgent attack. He is thus known by many epithets, ranging from evil lizard, opponent and enemy to world encircler and serpent of rebirth. During the Roman period he was interpreted as "he who was spat out" and linked to the saliva of the goddess Neith.

There is no evidence of this god prior to the Middle Kingdom. He seems to have come into existence in the Egyptian mind during the troubled times just after the pyramid age. Most of the god's mythology seems to have been developed mostly during the New Kingdom in funerary texts. There are various accounts of this malevolent force, but overall, as the sun god made his nightly voyage through the underworld and each morning as the solar barque was about to emerge into the daylight, it was attacked by the great serpent whose terrifying roar echoed through the darkness. The serpent was said to hinder the passage of the solar barque by means of its coils which are described as "sandbanks", and also by gorging the waters of the underworld river in order to attempt to strand the barque of Re.

Apophis was sometimes equated with Seth the god of chaos, yet the nature of Apophis seems to have always been dark and threatening, while Seth could at times be beneficial. In some texts, Seth was even enlisted by the sun god in order to defeat the serpent.

Note the dating of the beginning of the story of Apep - AFTER the Pyramid Age. Did the Great Pyramid have something to do with the beginning of the Serpent story, which features so much in the Bible from the Garden of Eden through to Revelation?

Now let us see what Tony Bushby has found out for us and reported in "The Secret in the BIble':
Chapter 'THE LETTERS OF LIGHT': "Ancient Egyptian priests held a tradition maintaining that, A serpent lies coiled in the Great Pyramid', and serpents linked the three major components of this study. A 'serpent that could not be slain, safeguarded the Book of Thoth, ancient Rabbis regularly referred to the Torah as the 'Serpent Book of the Ages' and Sumerians of 4000 years ago called the Great Pyramid 'The House of the Serpent'.

Then jumping from page 238 to 244 (unfortunately missing some very interesting facts about Serpents):
"There is an overwhelming reason why the serpent was held in such high respect, and looked upon in awe as God. Mentioned earlier was the belief that 'a reptile had been fashioned in that place', the complex at Giza. But what was that 'reptile'.

Existing today is an ancient papyrus called 'The Book of Overthrowing Apepi', Apepi, the Devil of Darkness, the archfiend of RA, and is devoted to the protection of RA, the great Lord of the Temple. The present interest in that papyrus centres on the fact that it contains two copies of the Egyptian story of Creation and each story is entitled, 'The Book of Knowing the Evolution of RA and of Overthrowing Apepi'. The word rendered 'Evolution' is 'Khepra', derived from the root 'Kheper', which means 'to make, to fashion, to produce, to form, to become', so that the title of the writing might just as well have said, 'The Book of the Creations of RA',. However the vital point is that RA said he took upon himself the form of a god called Khepra, a very early deity in Egyptian culture who was intimately connected with the creation of things of every kind. .... Khepra came to be symbolized by the famous beetle or scarab that belonged to the class of 'Coprophagi' or 'dung-eaters'.

The ancients believed that RA endowed Khepra with 'splendour and power in the form of a serpent' and that Khepra was another form of RA. Importantly, Khepra is identified as the god in the 'Temple of the Benben' at Heliopolis and that temple was dedicated to him. They believed all the attributes of RA were contained in Khepra and he was as great as RA. Like RA, Khepra was often described as 'the Sun-god of Heliopolis' and, importantly for the development of this premise, 'the Serpent god'. But what was Khepra? This hieroglyphic description provides part of the answer:

....the god Khepra who is unknown and who is more hidden that the other gods, whose vicar is the Divine Disk...he is a flame which sends forward rays of light with mighty splendor but though he cannot be seen in form, observation can be made of him at his appearance yet he cannot be understood, and at dawn mankind make supplication unto him. his risings are in crystal among the Company of Gods, and he is the beloved object of 'every god'.

In that extraordinary narrative Khepra is described as an 'object' in the form of a 'flame' that could not be 'understood' and rising in 'crystal'. He was in the 'Temple of the Benben' that was built to house the Benben while the Great Pyramid was under construction. In the interim, the Benben was placed high on a large square stone pillar creating the original concept of an obelisk, and that is why the enclosure was sometimes called the 'Temple of the Obelisk'. Combining the information recorded in ancient records, a precise description is given of an extraordinary luminous serpent-type coloured image rising vertically in the crystal Benben. It was called Khepra, the Serpent god, and the splendour of the phenomena was revered for centuries."