The Spear at the Prow

Egyptian tradition describes the sun travelling through the underworld each night, and something waiting for it: Apep, a serpent of pure disorder, coiled to stop the boat. The figure the texts station at the prow to fight it is Set. The texts hand him the spear because the job wants exactly his kind of violence, and the survival of the world turns on it nightly. Later Egyptians, having decided he was the villain of another story, sometimes wrote him out of this one and handed the spear to someone else — but the older sources are clear about who stood there.