Which serpent god was the personification of chaos and the enemy of Ra? Apep was the gigantic serpent deity of chaos who opposed Ra and threatened the ordered cosmos.
Also called Apophis, Apep represented darkness, disorder, and forces hostile to maat—the Egyptian principle of truth, justice, and cosmic balance. He was generally imagined as an enormous snake rather than a human-shaped deity, making him one of the clearest personifications of destructive chaos in Egyptian mythology.
Each night, Ra was believed to travel through the Duat, the Egyptian underworld, in his solar barque. Apep attempted to stop or swallow the sun during this journey. Gods and divine allies, including Seth in some traditions, fought the serpent so that Ra could rise again at dawn.
Apep was not usually treated like an ordinary god with a benevolent cult. Egyptian temple rituals instead included spells, images, and symbolic acts intended to restrain or destroy him. A common mistake is to equate Apep with a general snake deity such as Wadjet; Wadjet was a protective cobra goddess, while Apep embodied cosmic opposition to light and order.