Apis

Apis


 * Other Names:**

Opis, Haap, Hapis, Epi, Hape


 * Hieroglyphics:**

or


 * Titles:**

“Lord of Horns”

“Sky Bull of the West”

“Bull of the Duat”

“Living Deceased One”

"Son of Ptah"

A fertility symbol, the sacred bull, considered the “glorious //Ba//” (soul) of the god Ptah or Osiris, associated with Lower Egypt. In a funerary context, the Apis was a protector of the deceased, and linked to the pharaoh. This animal was chosen because it symbolized the king’s courageous heart, great strength, virility, and fighting spirit. The Apis was considered to be a manifestation of the pharaoh, as bulls were symbols of strength and fertility, qualities which are closely linked with kingship (“strong bull” was a common title for gods and pharaohs). The cult of the Apis started at the very beginning of Egyptian history, probably as a fertility god connected to grain and the herds.

The Apis bull was a real, living animal, selected from the herd and worshiped as a god. The Bull had special markings which set him apart as sacred from the herd. The Apis had to be black with a white triangular mark on his forehead, a pattern like the wings of a vulture on his back, double-colored hairs on his tail, a crescent moon on his right flank, and a scarab mark under his tongue. There were twenty-nine such sacred markings, according to classical authors. A special priest was appointed to search the land for a bull bearing all of them.

The Apis was described as “high of horns, beautiful of names, far-seer and wide-ranger.” The Apis was depicted as a great bull, sometimes running, wearing the sun-disk between his horns. When the sun disk was depicted on the Apis’ head with his horns below and the triangle on his forehead, the shape of an //ankh// was suggested. The Apis is unique as he is the only Egyptian god represented solely as an animal, and never as a human with an animal's head.

There was only one Apis bull at any time. He was kept in a temple with his own oracle, and provided with a harem of cows. The Apis was fed cakes made of the finest flour mixed with honey, and a special well of water was provided for it to drink. It was bedecked with lotus blossoms and golden jewelry. The scared bull was washed with hot baths, anointed with precious unguents, and perfumed with the sweetest odors. It was given a rich bed to lie upon. There was even a “window of appearance” for him, just like for the pharaoh. The birthday of the Apis was commemorated by an annual festival which lasted seven days.

The Apis was the subject of reverence, and visitors came from all parts of Egypt and abroad to view the god: "In front of the sanctuary there is situated a court, in which there is another sanctuary belonging to the bull's mother. Into this court they set the Apis loose at a certain hour, for although people can see him through the window in the sanctuary, they wish to see him outside also. When he has finished a short bout of skipping in the courtyard they take him back again to his familiar stall." Aelian describes in greater detail the place of the Apis: "The god is transported by a barque to Memphis, where he finds abodes after his heart and delightful spots to linger in, and places where he may amuse himself, where he may run and roll in the dust and exercise himself, and visit the homes of beautiful cows decorated with garlands and ornaments."

It was believed that prophecies could be divined from the Apis bull’s movements, and that its breath cured diseases. The philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum testified that the Apis bull had cured him of blindness; his paeans to the god were still sung as hymns centuries later. It was thought that any child who smelled the breath of the Apis had the ability to predict the future.

Pliny reported some methods of the bull's oracular delivery: "Companies of young boys escort it singing a song in its honor; it seems to understand and to desire to be worshiped. These companies are suddenly seized with frenzy and begin to chant prophecies of future events . . . the Apis has a pair of shrines, which they call its bedchambers, that supply the nation with auguries: when it enters one this is a joyful sign, but in the other one it portends terrible events." Pliny also claimed that the bull's behavior boded well for a person if the animal accepted food from them; it was an evil omen if he refused it. In a famous instance, the Apis foretold the death of Germanicus Caesar by refusing to take an offering from him.

On certain holidays the Apis bull was led through the streets of the city, bedecked with jewelry and flowers. Its official dress was a sun-disk crown with two ostrich plumes, a red and black rectangular diamond-pattern cloth across its back, silver horn sheaths, and a golden breastplate decorated with two cobras. A crowd of young boys followed singing hymns. By walking ceremoniously through the city, the Apis was believed to bless all those who lived there with prosperity and virility. Women approached the Apis bull in order to lift up their skirts and show him their vulva - this was believed to guarantee fertility.

When the Apis bull died, he was mourned and given a burial like that of a pharaoh, complete with mummification and burial in enormous stone sarcophagi weighing as much as 70 tons. In 547 B.C.E. the pharaoh Amasis built a red granite sarcophagus for the deceased Apis bull, more splendid than any that has ever been found for a pharaoh. The body of the bull was embalmed with precious oils on a white alabaster table, wrapped in hundred of yards of linen bandages, and decorated with gold and jewels. Like human dead, kohl was sometimes drawn around its eyes.

After mummification, the bull was arranged in the position of a recumbent sphinx, the tail placed under the right hind leg. A chin rest supported the head, and the animal was wrapped in a linen shroud and fitted with a golden mask. Its organs were carefully preserved in canopic jars. Some bulls were even buried with bovine-headed Ushabti figures to serve their needs in the next life, and heart (Ab) amulets. Occasionally, when the body of the bull was mummified, it was fixed in a standing position on a foundation made of wooden planks.

Two young women, preferably twin sisters, played the roles of Isis and Nephthys to mourn the Apis as if he had been Osiris himself. Versions of the types of laments they sang have survived in the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus and other sources. A solemn funeral procession was held, the body of the bull being placed into a four-wheeled chariot accompanied by the mourners, as well as a detachment of the army. The Egyptian people mourned the death of the Apis for 60 days, compared with 70 days for a pharaoh. The pious were expected to shave their heads, fast for four days, and then eat nothing but vegetables and bread, and drink nothing but water during this time.

When one Apis bull died, the future Psamtik III declared: "I am a true and favored servant of the great god. At his death I went into mourning, I deprived myself of water and bread until the four days had passed. I was naked and I trembled on my seat . . . No food went down to my stomach, except for bread, water, and vegetables, until the end of the sixty days when the great god left the embalming place and occupied his great tomb in the necropolis." After the mourning period was over, the search started among the herds for a new Apis.

When it was found, the new Apis bull was transported to its temple on a barque with a specially built golden cabin, and installed into its temple on the night of the full moon. During the first forty days, none but women were allowed to care for or see the Apis. The Egyptian people put on their festival clothing and celebrated when the new Apis was found. The bull was not allowed to live past 28 years (the age of Osiris when he was killed by Set), and upon reaching this age it was drowned in a scared well, and a new bull was sought. Twenty-eight years were also symbolic of the lunar month, which has twenty-eight days.

There is evidence that parts of the body of the Apis bull were eaten by the pharaoh and his priests to absorb the Apis’ great strength. The Apis was entitled “the renewal of the life” of the god Ptah, but after death he became //Osorapis//, the Osiris-Apis, just as dead men were assimilated to Osiris, the king of the underworld. After death, the Apis was sometimes pictured wearing the Atef Crown - also known as the "Osiris Crown."

The cow that produced the bull was venerated as a form of the mother goddess Isis, and was worshiped as well. The cow was believed to have conceived by a flash of lightning from the heavens, or from moonbeams. An area in the temple of Ptah was reserved for her as long as she lived. At her death she was buried at Saqqara; her funerary rites were supposed to be comparable to those of Apis himself.

The Apis bulls had their own sacred cemetery, known as the Sarapeum. The mothers of the Apis bulls were buried in the Iseum, not far away. Excavation of the Sarapeum at Memphis has revealed the tombs of over sixty bulls, ranging from the time of Amenophis III to that of Ptolemy Alexander. Each animal was buried in a separate tomb with a chapel built above it. The ages, enthronization, and death of each of the bulls were carefully recorded, as well as the name of the mother-cow and the place of birth.

One funerary stela of an Apis bull says: "Year 20, IV month of Summer, day 20, under the Pharaoh Wahibre, went forth the Living Apis to Heaven. This god was carried in peace to the Beautiful West in Year 21, I month of Inundation, day 25. Now, he was born in Year 26 of Pharaoh Taharqa, and received into Memphis in the IV month of Winter, on day 9; this makes 21 years, 2 months and seven days."

The Apis was often depicted on private coffins as a powerful protector. It was believed that to be under the protection of the Apis would give the person control over the four winds in Sehet Aaru, and that the bull’s great strength could be harnessed to thresh grain. The power and virility of the Apis could be invoked to ensure sexual intercourse in the afterlife, and in the Pyramid Texts the deceased king claims that the surging power of the bull’s phallus was one of the ways in which he was able to rise to the heavens.

Protective amulets of the Apis, made of gold, bronze, glass, and faience, were popular. An unusual class of bull-headed scarab amulets is associated with the Apis, probably related to a funerary aspect.

Apis was the most popular of the three great bull cults of ancient Egypt (the others being the bulls Mnevis and Buchis.) By the Late Period the Apis bull had become a kind of national mascot of Egypt.

The Apis was the approximate though not the exact equivalent in Egyptian religion to the Lamb in Christianity, a god to be venerated for his excellent kindness and for his mercy towards all strangers. As Christ was a sacrificial lamb, so the Apis was a sacrificial bull as well as a god in animal form. In earlier times he was annually sacrificed in atonement for the sins of Egypt, with the words: “If any evil be about to befall either those who now sacrifice, or Egypt in general, may it be averted on this head.” Wine was poured over the bull, then it was either drowned or its throat was slit, its skin flayed, and its head tossed into the Nile.

The ancient Greeks, Romans, and Christians were often baffled by the animal-gods of Egypt – the Roman Augustus said he was “wont to worship gods, not bulls.” They were ignorant of the fact that the gods of Egypt were pictured as animals or with animal heads for the benefit of the illiterate, who could recognize the attributes of the gods by association with their sacred animals. The Egyptian people worshiped not an actual animal but rather the divine being to whom the animal belonged, or the god who temporarily consented to dwell in the body of one of his symbols. Thus, the Apis was not worshiped for its own sake - it was an avatar of the god Ptah. It is a gross oversimplification of the complexities of Egyptian religion to say that the ancient Egyptians worshiped animals.

According to Herodotus, the belief in the Apis bull was desecrated in 525 B.C.E. by the Persian King Cambyses when he overtook the city of Memphis. Herodotus states that the day after Cambyses’ bloody battle, he awoke to discover the Egyptians in Memphis celebrating. Upon asking why a defeated people would rejoice after being so brutally beaten, he was told that a living god had just been born. Cambyses demanded that this god be brought before him, and when he was presented with the Apis calf, he tried to slay it, but missed his aim and stabbed the bull in the thigh. He mocked the Egyptians for worshiping bulls, showing them that the Apis bled like any other animal. The calf died, and Cambyses had it cooked and served at a banquet.

Horrified Egyptians considered this blasphemy to be the reason for all of Egypt’s future tragedies. Later Cambyses was wounded in the same place as he had injured the bull during battle, and subsequently died. Another version says that he went mad and ended up killing his own brother and sister, and that his body was cut up to feed Egypt's sacred cats. Plutarch thought that the story was written to show “the harshness and wickedness of (Cambyses') character.”

In 1890, thousands upon thousands of mummified Apis bulls from the Apis cemetery at Abusir were transported to Europe to be ground up and used as fertilizer.


 * Outside o****f Egypt:**

Unlike the cults of most of the other Egyptian deities, the worship of the Apis bull was continued by the Greeks and after them by the Romans, and lasted until almost 400 C.E. Alexander the Great sacrificed to the Apis bull and was hailed as the new pharaoh. As Serapis or Sarapis, the Apis was even worshiped as a form of the god Zeus (the image of a bearded man with bull’s horns). For Julian the Apostate, the prayer was “One Zeus, one Hades, one Sun Sarapis.” At the time of the emperor Hadrian those who called themselves Bishops of Christ are recorded to have devoted their souls to Sarapis.

Sarapis became the national deity, a great patron of arts and letters, and was thought to protect soldiers on the battlefield. His temple, the Sarapeum at Alexandria, was a cathedral of pilgrimage and medicine. By all of the detailed descriptions, the Sarapeum was the largest and most magnificent of all temples in the Greek quarter. The Sarapeum included a vast library of literary treasures from all over the Roman Empire, over 700,000 texts, a storehouse of contemporary learning. Rufinus mentions that the upper floors of the Sarapeum contained lecture halls, and that there was a window through which the sun's rays bathed a statue of Sarapis.

When Christianity came to power in Alexandria, the library was attacked, though it was desperately defended for three years. Finally, the Christian Emperor Theodosius gave a direct order that the building must be wreaked and the books burned. Christians therefore leveled the Sarapeum to the ground and burned its library, the largest in the ancient world, eliminating most of the ancient world’s important literature in one holocaust.

Perhaps the greatest loss was the thirty-volume //History of Egypt//, commissioned by Ptolemy I from an Egyptian priest, Manetho, and estimated to have been written sometime around 250 B.C.E. Scraps of the contents of Manetho's work are known, thanks to surviving commentaries on the work from later periods. It is in accordance with Manetho's system that we still divide the history of Egypt into thirty or thirty-one dynasties.

Some theories state that the “golden calf” mentioned in the bible was meant to be a statue of the Apis (Exodus 32:4-32:6.) Later, images of bulls were erected in the sanctuaries of Israel by Jeroboam, and this was regarded as a great sin (Kings, I, 12, 28-33; II, 10, 29; Hosea 8, 5-6.) The use of bulls to support parts of Solomon's temple suggests a survival of the ancient belief in the sacredness of bulls (Kings I, 7, 25.)


 * Modern Influence:**

Sarapis was later assimilated into the canon of Catholic saints as St. Sarapions, the companion of St. Anthony. The Emperor Theodosius also came to be regarded as a saint.

Egyptian Deities - A