1Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, tr. Alexander Turner Cory, [1840], at sacred-texts.com
When they would represent the universe, they delineate a SERPENT bespeckled with variegated scales, devouring its own tail; by the scales intimating the stars in the universe. The animal is also extremely heavy, as is the earth, and extremely slippery, like the water: moreover, it every year puts off its old age with its skin, as in the universe the annual period effects a corresponding
change, and becomes renovated. And the making use of its own body for food implies, that all things whatsoever, that are generated by divine providence in the world, undergo a corruption 1 into it again.
The figures of the god Atmou sometimes exhibit instances of a serpent with its tail in its mouth. See Pl. I. fig. 1. Perhaps the nearest known approximation to the text is the serpent running round the lid of the sarcophagus of Ramesses III. at Cambridge, which rusts its head upon its tail, and may indicate the Universe.
8:1 De Pauw proposes εἰς αυτὸ, or εἰς αὑτὰ, which Leemans adopts. But it simply refers to the ancient doctrine of Generation and Corruption. See Arist. de Gen. et Cor.