Apis

Summary

Apis was a living bull worshipped at Memphis in a temple beside the temple of Ptah, seen by the Egyptians as the living image of Osiris. He was a living calf born with particular markings; once found, he lived in the temple until he died, was buried like a king, and his successor was sought.

Herodotus describes his marks. He is born of a cow that can never conceive again, and the Egyptians say a light from heaven comes down on her and she conceives him. He is black, with a three-cornered white spot on his forehead, the likeness of an eagle on his back, double hairs in his tail and a knot under his tongue. A priest examined the bulls to be sacrificed, making each stand and lie down, drawing out its tongue and looking at the hairs of its tail; if he found even one black hair on it, the bull was impure, and no bull could be sacrificed without his seal, because bulls belonged to Apis. Herodotus says King Psammetichus built a court for Apis facing the temple of Ptah, with a colonnade all round it and statues twenty feet high for pillars, where Apis was kept and fed whenever he appeared. Strabo says his mother had a sanctuary in the same court, and that the bull was let loose in the court at times to be shown to strangers, frisked about a little, and was taken back to his stall.

Diodorus tells how his life ends and begins again. When Apis dies the Egyptians mourn him as people who have lost a beloved child, and bury him beyond their means: he says that an Apis died of old age after Alexander's death, and his keeper spent on the burial all the money set aside for his upkeep and borrowed fifty talents of silver from Ptolemy son of Lagus besides. Then the priests seek a young bull with markings like those of its predecessor; when it is found the mourning ends, and they take it to Nilopolis, where it is kept forty days during which only women may look at it, and then bring it in a barge with a gilded cabin to the sanctuary of Ptah at Memphis. Some say that when Osiris died his soul passed into this animal, and passes still into its successors.

The idea his story turns on is that the god lives in a body that ages and dies, and does not die himself. The bull is known by his marks, served and fed, then dies and is wept for as Isis wept for Osiris, and the new body the soul has passed into is sought out, so that the god returns to his temple. That is why Plutarch calls Apis "the image of the soul of Osiris", and says most priests hold that Osiris and Apis are joined into one, the union from which the name Serapis came. The story belongs to the sacred bull among the peoples and to the dying and rising god. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 20 and 29.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Egyptians write Ḥp, ḥ then p, and the Greeks Ἆπις, Apis, with the ḥ dropped and the ending -is added. The project's Egyptian essay reads the p of Ptah as Arabic f, so that Ptah is fataḥa, and on the same correspondence Ḥp is ḥaffa. In Lane, ḥaffa al-qawmu bi-l-bayt is said of people going round about the House, ḥaffūhu is to surround someone, and the proverb man ḥaffanā aw raffanā fa-l-yaqtaṣid means "whoever goes round about us, minds our affairs, serves us and guards us, let him be moderate"; ḥaffahu is also to give to someone and bring him food, and ḥafīf is the sound of a horse's feet in running. On this reading Apis is the one surrounded and attended: a bull enclosed by a colonnaded court and served by men of rank who bring him the finest food, as Diodorus says. It is a reading proposed on the method, and its limits are set out under the linguistic root.

Linguistic Root

The ḥ and the p

The Ancient Egyptian Dictionary gives the name as Ḥp, citing the Berlin Wörterbuch, volume 3, page 70, with occurrences such as "I had a palace built for Apis in the Beautiful West". Egyptian ḥ is Arabic ḥ, and it drops in Greek, as the Juthoor table says, leaving Ἆπις. Egyptian p is Arabic f on the correspondence by which the Egyptian essay reads the name of Ptah, and it answers f in the name firʿawn, Pharaoh, as well. So the two letters are ḥ-f, and the root in Lane is ḥaffa. Its three senses meet in Apis: being surrounded in his court, being attended and fed, and the sound of his running when he is let loose in the court to be seen. The limit of the reading is that no Egyptian word ḥp meaning to surround, attend or run is known, so the reading reads what people do around him, not an attested Egyptian meaning of the name.

Serapis

Plutarch gives several views of the name Serapis: some derive it from a Greek verb meaning to sweep and to set in order, some say it is the name of the coffin of Apis, and most of the priests, he says, hold that Osiris and Apis are joined into one, so that Apis is the bodily image of the soul of Osiris. The Ancient Egyptian Dictionary records the compound Ḥp-Wsjr, "Apis-Osiris"; in the reverse order, Wsjr-Ḥp, comes Oserapis and then Serapis.

Key Mythic Narratives

Cambyses stabs Apis

When the Persian king Cambyses came back to Memphis after losing much of his army, Apis appeared, and the Egyptians put on their best clothes and held a festival. Cambyses thought they were rejoicing at his misfortune; he killed the rulers of Memphis who told him a god had appeared, then had the priests bring Apis, drew his dagger to stab the calf in the belly and struck the thigh, and laughed: "Are these your gods, creatures of flesh and blood that can feel weapons of iron?" He had the priests scourged and anyone found holiday-making killed. Apis lay in the temple and died of the wound in his thigh, and the priests buried him in secret. Plutarch adds that when Cambyses had killed Apis and cast out the body, nothing came near it or ate of it but the dog, and so the dog lost its old place of honour among the Egyptians.

Born of the moon's light

Herodotus says a light from heaven makes the cow pregnant with Apis; Plutarch says he comes into being when a fructifying light thrusts forth from the moon and falls on a cow in her breeding season, which is why there are many things in Apis like the features of the moon, his bright parts darkened by the shadowy. At the new moon of the month Phamenoth the Egyptians celebrate a festival called "Osiris's coming to the Moon", which marks the beginning of spring.

The Serapeum

Strabo says that at Memphis there was a temple of Sarapis in a very sandy spot where the wind heaped up the sand, and that he saw sphinxes buried in it up to the head and others half visible. Eighteen centuries later the Frenchman Auguste Mariette was surveying the necropolis of Saqqara when he saw one of these sphinxes three-quarters buried, remembered Strabo's words, and dug along the avenue of sphinxes until he reached the Serapeum, where the bodies of the Apis bulls had been buried in galleries under the ground.

Symbolic Reading

Diodorus says the Egyptians hold the two bulls Apis and Mnevis sacred and consecrate them to Osiris because, more than any other animals, they helped those who discovered grain in sowing and in every labour of the fields by which mankind profits. In this ancient explanation the worshipped bull is the bull that ploughs, and his death and return are the death and return of the crop with Osiris. The project's Hindu essay sets Apis beside Nandi, the bull of Shiva, and calls it "the same idea exactly": a sacred bull who stands at his god's temple.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At Heliopolis there was another bull, Mnevis, which Strabo says was kept in the temple of the sun and worshipped as Apis was at Memphis; and in the Book of the Dead the parts of the ferry-boat of the hereafter are made from the hide of Mnevis, as told under the river of the dead. Strabo 17.1.27; AED, Mr-wr.

In the Qur'an the Children of Israel are told to slaughter a cow "not trained to plough the earth nor to water the tillage, sound, with no blemish on her", no colour on her other than her own; and the Egyptian priest examined the bull to be sacrificed hair by hair, rejecting it if he found one black hair. In both places the cow intended is known by its colour and by the absence or presence of a mark.

The Egyptians say Apis is born of the moon's light, and the Greeks tell that Epaphus, the name Herodotus gives Apis, is the son of Zeus by Io, whom Zeus turned into a white cow; Hera's gadfly drove her from land to land until she reached Egypt, recovered her form and bore him beside the Nile, and Epaphus reigned over Egypt and founded Memphis, naming it after his wife, while the Egyptians called Io Isis. Library 2.1.3–4. In Crete a bull comes out of the sea for a king who keeps it back and angers the god, as on the Theseus page, and in Mesopotamia Anu sends the Bull of Heaven; all of these are brought together in the sacred bull.