APOPHIS AND THE GOA'ULD RACE
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for episodes in Season Two and mid-Season Three. Proceed at your own risk.
 Perhaps the most interesting character in "Stargate SG-1," is Apophis. He could be seen as a typical Goa'uld System Lord identifying himself with the Egyptian deity of the same name. However, when certain revelations are made about this character there are many things that can be said about bringing the Egyptian religious beliefs into the series.
But a question has to be asked: why introduce this particular character first? There are other Egyptian deities who could serve the same purpose, such as Set, god of chaos, or Anubis, lord of the dead. Perhaps the most appropriate answer is that Apophis set the stage for how the series would progress and he symbolically represented the entire Goa'uld race's parasitic nature.
It is not because he was simply the representative snake-god in the Egyptian pantheon. For Apophis to be effective, he has to be more of a presence -- a force of nature in the universe -- that the SG-1 has to deal with. As a force of evil and darkness, he can then be considered an apt first villain to introduce.
Unfortunately, the introduction that Daniel Jackson gives in "Children of the Gods" is very rudimentary. Apophis was identified as an opponent of Ra, and serpent god. The information he gave from the Internet about the legendary deity was incomplete and incorrect.
 For the legendary version, Apophis is the name given by the Greeks. His Egyptian name is Apep, and he is described as a monster living in perpetual darkness. In the Book of the Dead, he is not considered a god - instead, he was a beast.1 In either role, he was the leader of a band of rogue entities who opposed Ra, the sun god. Each night this serpentine beast tried to stop the sun god's journey through the underworld on a boat. In this traditional struggle between light and darkness, this beast is often wounded but never killed by Ra's divine entourage of warriors2.
When regarding why this mythic creature is snake-like, one would have to look at E.A. Wallis Budge's introductory notes to see where the television writers took their inspiration. Ancient Egyptians regarded the worm and snake as the main enemy of the natural, human body (i.e. the soul)3. As an emblem of physical and moral evil, they were symbolic of the forces that were hostile to Ra and many charms were made to protect the mummified remains from them.
By using these snakes to identify the original form of the Goa'uld is an interesting one and it stays faithful to the movie's only definition of who Ra was. As a parasite, the Goa'uld snake invades a host and literally puts his or her soul into the closet.
If anything of the host survives, the episode "Secrets," "Serpent's Song" and "Pretense," demonstrates it does. Respectively, Sha're speaks to Daniel in a vision, the frightened Egyptian (Apophis' host) welcomes his liberation and his death from the beast within (the Goa'uld), and Skaara sees the evil that the Goa'uld forced him to do. Since these parasites can be removed, in some form or another, the freedom of the natural human body can be attained.
 While it is interesting that the series' writers decided to use this character, he is not the Egyptian deity at all. In the television series, one of the first comments made was that he bore a striking resemblance to Ra. When compared to the myth, he is not. It would have been more appropriate to give him snake-like features or a slithery voice to distinguish this version of Apophis from Ra. To identify his warriors from those of other System Lords, it was appropriate to identify them with a forehead tattoo of two snakes, along with a helmet-mask of a snake.
While Apophis challenges Ra for a seat of power, the reasoning behind it is wrong. Stargate's Ra is just as evil as Apophis and just as parasitic. Also, the former is supposed to represent the light and the latter darkness. Even more interesting is that Sokar, another Goa'uld System Lord, also holds the title of Lord of Darkness - he was the original lord4. The two would make natural enemies in the television show because they both vy for the same title. But in legend, they would possibly be natural allies against sun god Ra.
In that sense, the television series tells a traditional story of a light and darkness war. Instead of Ra, the SG-1 team represents the forces of light; they are Ra's warriors in an ironic sense. They defeated him in the movie. Apophis is the leader of the forces of darkness and a snake god - a parasite.
 After the events in "Serpent's Song", "Rules of Engagement" and "The Devil You Know," he now rules hell and his continuation in the television series remains a mystery. Sadly, his role as a "god" is likened more to biblical definitions than metaphysical fact. He is more representative of entropy; a natural crawling chaos that constantly seeks to dissolve and destroy the universe than to conquer it5.
As for Apophis' most recent appearance in the television series, he is not a force of darkness but rather a devil in disguise. Thus, the series takes on the traditional epic tale, where the forces of light gather to combat the forces of darkness. SG-1 is the former, and Apophis is the latter. As for the direction the series may go, it remains to be seen until his upcoming return in Season Four.
FOOTNOTES
1. Budge, E.A. Wallis. Egyptian Book of the Dead, p. Cxxviii-cxxix
2. http://www.pantheon.org/mythica/articles/a/apep.html
3. Budge, E.A. Wallis. Egyptian Book of the Dead, p. Cxxviii-cxxix
4. http://www.kemet.org/nfrnames/sokar.html
5. http://www.kemet.org/nfrnames/apep.html
|
