1. Several thousand years ago, a baby is found in the Egyptian desert by Baal and the Sandstormers. The child's fitness to survive is tested and is given the name En Sabah Nur.
2. En Sabah Nur and Baal are trapped in a cave-in and Nur should be dead, crushed under a boulder. Baal tends to his wounds and they struggle to find a way out of the caves. Baal tells the origin of Rama-Tut, that he came from the sky with the Sphinx and lost his ship, which the Sandstormers found and kept from him. Rama-tut slaughtered the Sandstormers in retribution. Meanwhile outside the cave Ozymandias leads slaves in the building of a pyramid while Rama Tut marries his sister Nephri. Baal dies before they can escape the cave but tells Nur that he is "the first one" and he is to go to the Sphinx before he passes. Nur claws his way to the surface and is found by Logos, Rama Tut's head scientist who wants to use him against Ozymandias.
3. En Sabah Nur is under the enslavement of Ozymandias who whips him and throws him from the top of a pyramid to his death. Nur rises like a star in the sky with energy beaming out of him, then falls to the ground. Ozymandias orders the slaves to kill him, instead they worship him. Meanwhile Rama-Tut has the Fantastic Four captured for some reason and thinks he's going to conquer the planet. Nephri takes Nur to her bedroom and he adores her but his vision of Osiris tells him to leave her. Tut orders the slaves to be slaughtered so that they can't hide Nur and then realizes Logos and Nephri have hid him. Tut uses Nephri and Logos to lull Nur into a gathering and offers Nur future rights to his throne. Tut kills Logos when he tries to warn Nur and Nur attacks Tut, with Tut gaining the upper hand in the end using his ultra diode raygun.
4. En Sabah Nur is being hunted by Ozymandias who slaughters dozens of slaves and piles them with a captive Nephri atop them. Nur rescues her and saves her from a giant serpent but she's horrified by him and rejects him. Nur grows in size after being speared by Ozymandias and declares himself Apocalypse for the first time. Meanwhile the Rama-Tut is in heated battle with the Fantastic Four beneath the Sphinx. Ozymandias follows Apocalypse into the Sphinx and Apocalypse uses Tut's technology to transform Ozymandias into the stone servant being he would remain for thousands of years. Tut and the Fantastic Four escape into the timestream and Apocalypse emerges alone from the Sphinx, worshiped by Egypt. In the future, Apocalypse is by the now Queen Nephri's deathbed and mocks her for rejecting him.