Ammut/Ammitu

Also the final episode of Moon Knight has been released, and finally we got a proper look at the series’ main villain, who’s been acting from behind the curtains since the beginning. In Gods and Monsters, the mighty Ammit appears in all her scaly glory, portrayed (mainly dubbed) by Saba Mubarak. As many other gods from the Egyptian myths, she’s been included in the Marvel Universe, but in the comics she’s mostly known with a different transliteration, Ammut, sometimes even Ammitu… but she’s always the same crocodile-faced Devourer of the Dead. Let’s take a look.

The terrifying demon-sphinx known as Ammut was created by Ma’at, the Goddess of Truth, who mixed petals of acacia flower with the sacred waters of the Nile, with black sand and with condensed desert heat, and gave form to one of her most loyal and formidable servants. With the head of a crocodile, the body of a hippopotamus, the paws of a leopard and the mane and tail of a lion, Ammut was the guardian of the Halls of Ma’at, and guarded the Throne of Bones. In Heliopolis, she offered her services also to Anubis and Osiris, the gods of the underworld, and she attended the Judgement of Scales: every mortal soul that came before the throne of Osiris was judged before being admitted to the afterlife, their heart weighted against a feather of Ma’at. If the soul had been virtuous, the heart would have been lighter than the feather, and they would have been admitted to an eternity of bliss in Duat; if the opposite happened, then Ammut feasted on the wicked soul. Ammut, however, sometimes walked the land of the living as well: during the Hyborian Age, she was summoned by Tothmekir, an exiled Stygian prince who tried to obtain her favor in a battle against the Barachan pirate Tranicos, but when she came she found herself trapped in the massive fortress Tothmekir had built, and was unable to aid the prince, who died soon after. Ammut stayed in the fortress for one hundred years, when other pirates inadvertently awakened her: she attacked them, devouring body and soul of the corrupted buccaneers, but then one of them, Conan the Cimmerian, realized that the monster’s presence in the physical world depended on the dead prince’s summoning, and thus he destroyed the amulet Tothmekir had used to conjure the monstrous sphinx. Ammut faded away, leaving behind only a giant statue of herself that Conan smashed.

Ammut attended to her duties for millennia, until her mistress Ma’at, during the XI Century BC, sent her back to the land of the living in aid of her high priestess Ashake. The sorceress had been forced, along with the time-traveling mutant Magik, by the sorcerer Heka-Nut to infiltrate a hidden crypt in the Valley of Kings to steal for him the Sword of Bone, a powerful magic weapon. The crypt was guarded by giant snakes, and Ammut appeared just in time to slay them, protecting the two women and allowing them to complete their task (not that it caused any harm: the Sword of Bone could be wielded only by the pure of heart, so when Heka-Nut tried to use it, it actually caused his downfall). After that, Ammut became also the guardian of the Sword of Bone, and she was there when, almost three thousands years later, someone else tried to obtain it: Ian McNee, a young magician who wanted the blade to bring balance and order in the magical world by resurrecting Heka-Nut. Ammut appeared to him in human form, in the Theban Necropolis, but McNee recognized her nevertheless, and offered a tribute to Ma’at, calling her by her real name Oshtur, in exchange of safe passage to the Halls of Ma’at in the Astral Plane. Ammut allowed him to cross the realms, but she challenged him nevertheless, as she couldn’t part from the Sword of Bone without a fight: faithful to her nature of sphinx, though, she preferred a game of mind rather than a clash, and provided the magician with a riddle. The question wasn’t an easy one: “We walk the green and grassy lands and stalk the lands and stalk the stark and scorching sands/We climb across the craggy peaks and crouch beneath the stagnant creeks./At home in all, but none are home./Abide we ‘tween abodes,/We know, we dare, we will, shall in silence cross all roads./Who are we?“. McNee, however, rightfully guessed that the answer was Ammut herself, as the riddle referred to the four aspects of her body: hippo, lion, leopard and crocodile (adding himself because of the “we”), so Ammut let him go with the Sword, pointing him to his next target, the Ebon Rose held by Morgan LeFay. For her next assignment on Earth, Ammut aided Khonshu, and possessed Dr. Emmet to imprison the Good of the Moon‘s rebellious avatar Marc Spector in a mind prison. Maybe, this time she would have finally fed.

Ammut is a terrible and remorseless creature, a demonic entity who inhabits the nightmares of those who believe in her, but she’s also a loyal servant of necessity, who only accomplishes the tasks she’s assigned with, and who maintains balance of creation with her work. An ancient sphinx-demon, she’s extremely powerful, an immortal beast who can consume bodies, souls and several forms of magic, who can travel between realms and assume human form, who can absorb knowledge from living beings and who can see through many aspects of reality thanks to the leopard spots on her body, that are actually mystical eyes. Proud of her intelligence and of her place in the universe, Ammut has been serving her cosmic purpose for millennia, grating justice even in the afterlife by consuming the spirits of the wicked.