(en) This article aims at giving an overall view of iconographic and textual sources about the fight between the god Seth and the snake Apophis. After a presentation of a typology of the iconographic sources and a discussion of each of them in relation to drawings, I will quote selected excerpts on this mythical battle. Then, a mythological commentary is dealing with differences between Seth and Apophis. I will stress in particular the political and religious reasons why the Ramessides, and especially Ramses II, promoted the positive role of Seth as defender of the solar bark. On the basis of the collected documentation, I will also advance evidence for the clear differentiation between the Jubilee Seth (the Seth of Ramses), cosmic god that protects Re against Apophis, and the Seth of Avaris with hyksos origins. Finally the comparison with the Anatolian myth of Illuyanka will enlighten the particularities of the Egyptian myth.
De Maré, C. (2018). Le combat mythique entre Seth et Apophis : les raisons de la valorisation d’un mythe. Acta Orientalia Belgica, XXXI (2018). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/177072 (Original work published 2018)