Apophis embodies a distinctive feature of Egyptian religious thought: chaos is not defeated once but must be held off perpetually. Each night, as the sun god Ra sails his barque through the Duat, the great serpent lies in wait to swallow the sun and end the ordered world; each night he is repelled by Ra's defenders, among them Set, whose violence, destructive in the Osiris myth, is here turned to the cosmos's service.
Apophis is never destroyed, only driven back, and his defeat must be re-enacted at every dawn. This is why he had, in effect, an anti-cult: temple texts such as the Book of Overthrowing Apophis prescribe rites to curse and symbolically annihilate him, making wax figures, spitting on them, burning them, so that priests actively participated in the nightly victory. He receives no worship and has no temple of his own. He is the Egyptian image of entropy given a face: the permanent possibility that the sun will not rise, kept at bay only by unremitting ritual labour.