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Two unconnected traditions furnish the between-worlds interval identically: everything drowned back into one primeval water; a span measured in cosmic units (millions of years / a night of Brahma); and the sole survivor a god withdrawn into or onto a SERPENT, explicitly unseen by men and gods, waiting out the gap. The long sleep is literally a sleep · on the water, in serpent company · and both texts agree that no one inside an age can witness it.
The chapter shows the interval-world from inside: 'airless, waterless... it is black as the blackest night, and men wander helplessly therein.' Its duration is decreed: 'thou shalt live for millions of millions of years, a life of millions of years.' And Atum announces the end of the current world in the same chapter: he will destroy all he has made, the land 'will return into Nun, into the flood, as in its first state,' while he alone remains with Osiris, transformed into serpents 'which men know not' and gods do not see.
set against Vishnu Purana VI.4
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