Apis

“ There were to be rich harvests in the wide Nile valley, and health and prosperity and peace.
Only a child, lying on a carved bed under a painted ceiling, cried herself to sleep for a joy that was not to be hers—for a black calf that had grown to be a bull and gone away to the city of Apis, where he could never know how happy she would have made him with kisses and soft strokings and garlands of flowers.
And Apis himself? We cannot tell if he dreamed of Tophra and the white mother cow, as he lay in the stately stable, two thousand years ago. ”

“ APIS (Ἄπις) , the Bull of Memphis, which enjoyed the highest honours as a god among the Egyptians. (Pomp. Mela, i. 9; Aelian, Hist. An. xi. 10; Lucian, de Sacrif. 15.) He is called the greatest of gods, and the god of all nations, while others regard him more in the light of a symbol of some great divinity; for some authorities state, that Apis was the bull sacred to the moon, as Mnevis was the one sacred to the sun. ”

“ His eyes grew worse, and on the very day which brought us the news of your safe arrival in Babylon, Amasis became totally blind.
"The cheerful, active man has become old, gloomy and decrepit since that day. The death of Apis, and the unfavorable constellations and oracles weigh on his mind; his happy temper is clouded by the unbroken night in which he lives; and the consciousness that he cannot stir a step alone causes indecision and uncertainty. The daring and independent ruler will soon become a mere tool, by means of which the priests can work their will. ”

“ Apis was the most important of all the sacred animals in Egypt, and, like the others, its importance increased as time went on. Greek and Roman authors have much to say about Apis, the marks by which the black bull-calf was recognized, the manner of his conception by a ray from heaven, his house at Memphis with court for disporting himself, the mode of prognostication from his actions, the mourning at his death, his costly burial and the rejoicings throughout the country when a new Apis was found. ”

“ The worship of Apis was, without doubt, originally nothing but the simple worship of the bull, and formed a part of the fetish-worship of the Egyptians; but in the course of time, the bull, like other animals, was regarded as a symbol in the astronomical and physical systems of the Egyptian priests. How far this was carried may be seen from what Aelian says about the twenty-nine marks on the body of Apis, which form a complete astronomical and physical system. ”

“ But of all the animals, the ox kind received the highest honors. Bulls were occasionally sacrificed, but cows never. They were sacred to Isis, the Moon Goddess. There were special individuals of the species, however, who were looked upon with the utmost veneration. They were called Apis and Mnevis. Apis was a black bull, but had a white star on his forehead, the figure of an eagle on his back, a crescent on his right side, with a knot under his tongue, resembling the Scarabeus or sacred beetle. Apis is described as living twenty-five years, when he jumped into a well or into the river Nile. ”

“ Sarapis, as the former called him, or Asar-Hapi, as he was known to the latter, was a name compounded from Osiris and Apis. So early as the beginning of the New Empire these two deities—Apis, the sacred bull of Mendes, and Osiris, the 'Bull of the West'—had been to some extent identified, and finally the Apis had been given the attributes of a god of the underworld. To the Greeks, it would appear, Sarapis was the form taken by the deceased Apis bull. Tradition assigns the identification of Sarapis with Pluto to the reign of Ptolemy Soter. Plutarch gives the following version of the legend. ”

“ He was a native of Naupactum, and descended from Inachus. He received divine honours after death, as he had been munificent and humane to his subjects. The country where he reigned was called Apia; and afterwards it received the name of Pelasgia, Argia, or Argolis, and at last that of Peloponnesus, from Pelops. Some, amongst whom is Varro and St. Augustine, have imagined that Apis went to Egypt with a colony of Greeks, and that he civilized the inhabitants, and polished their manners, for which they made him a god after death, and paid divine honours to him under the name of Serapis. ”

“ The unwonted tumult that had broken the stillness of the night had not been unobserved in the Greek Serapeum any more than in the Egyptian temple adjoining the Apis-tombs; but perfect silence once more reigned in the Necropolis, when at last the great gate of the sanctuary of Osiris-Apis was thrown open, and a little troop of priests arranged in a procession came out from it with a vanguard of temple servants, who had been armed with sacrificial knives and axes. ”

“ At his command, the animal was produced; he drew his dagger, struck Apis in the thigh, and said, laughing, “Fools, are such things gods, composed of flesh and blood and penetrable to [126] steel? He is indeed a god worthy of the Egyptians! For you, you shall not make a mock of me with impunity.” So saying, he ordered the priests to be scourged, and all persons found celebrating the feast to be slain. Apis died, and was buried secretly. From this sacrilege the Egyptians dated the madness of Cambyses. ”

“ They are unwilling for Apis to become too fat, or to become so themselves, but wish their souls to be sustained by slight, active, nimble bodies, and that the divine part within may not be oppressed and weighed down by the burden of what is mortal.
“In the city of Heliopolis, or the City of the Sun, those who worship the divinity never carry any wine into the temple, because it is not suitable to drink in the presence of their lord and king. ”

“ And even in the later and more degraded worship of the bull-god Apis, while the common crowd see only the apotheosis of sensualism, as thou hast called it, in the fact that, when a new Apis is discovered, devout women at Memphis, during forty days, expose themselves stripped naked to the gaze of the sacred brute, the sad-faced priests realize that the endless and unavailing search to discover Hapi, 'the concealed,' had sometimes been prosecuted by unlawful means, against which Moses, in the Jewish scriptures, denounced the penalty of death. ”

“ It is assumed above that the name Serapis (so written in later Greek and in Latin, in earlier Greek Sarapis) is derived from the Egyptian Userhapi—as it were Osiris-Apis—the name of the bull Apis, dead and, like all the blessed dead, assimilated to Osiris, king of the underworld. ”

“ And since in every temple where Isis and Serapis were worshipped there was also an image which, with finger pressed on the lips, seemed to warn men to keep silence, Varro thinks this signifies that it should be kept secret that they had been human. But that bull which, with wonderful folly, deluded Egypt nourished with abundant delicacies in honor of him, was not called Serapis, but Apis, because they worshipped him alive without a sarcophagus. ”

“ Is not it strange that Apis, the sacred ox of the Egyptians, is honored by the followers of Zoroaster, as well as by the Hindus? The ox Nardi, the emblem of life in nature, is the son of the creating father, or rather his life-giving breath. Ammianus Marcellinus mentions, in one of his works, that there exists a book which gives the exact age of Apis, the clue to the mystery of creation and the cyclic calculations. The Brahmans also explain the allegory of the ox Nardi by the continuation of life on our globe. ”

“ But the idea of returning the soul in water to the man is found as a magic process in North America ("Golden Bough," i. 141) .
The first transformation of Bata, into a bull, is clearly drawn from the Apis bull of Memphis. The rejoicings at discovering a real successor of Apis are here, the rejoicings over Bata, who is the Apis bull, distinguished as he says by "bearing every good mark." ”

“ Again, Diodorus gives an account of the finding of the Apis and the method of its installation on the death [Pg 285] and funeral of a former incarnation of the god Osiris: "After the splendid funeral of Apis is over those priests who have charge of the business seek out another calf as like the former as they can possibly find, and when they have found one an end is put to all further mourning and lamentation, and such priests as are appointed for that purpose lead the young ox through the city of Nile and feed him forty days. ”

“ When he departed, having fully accomplished the sacrifices, letters were brought to him from the governor of Egypt, who informed him that after a long time he had succeeded in finding a bull Apis, which he had been seeking with great labour, a circumstance which, in the opinion of the inhabitants of those regions, indicates prosperity, abundant crops, and several other kinds of good fortune.
7. On this subject it seems desirable to say a few words. Among the animals which have been consecrated by the reverence of the ancients, Mnevis and Apis are the most eminent. ”

“ Thus the festival of the Egyptians had been brought to an end, and the priests were being chastised, and Apis wounded by the stroke in his thigh lay dying in the temple.
30. Him, when he had brought his life to an end by reason of the wound, the priests buried without the knowledge of Cambyses: but Cambyses, as the Egyptians say, immediately after this evil deed became absolutely mad, not having been really in his right senses even before that time: and the first of his evil deeds was that he put to death his brother Smerdis, who was of the same father and the same mother as himself. ”

“ As the birth of Apis filled all Egypt with joy and festivities, so his death threw the whole country into grief and mourning; and there was no one, as Lucian says, who valued his hair so much that he would not have shorn his head on that occasion. ”

“ A more ancient form of symbolizing the union of heaven and earth seems to have been the cult of Apis, which, according to Maspero, preceded the building of the pyramids and could scarcely have arisen before the adoption of the cow or bull, ua, as the rebus of Polaris, the One=ua. ”

“ He was solemnly introduced into the temple of Ptah, beside his father Ptah.’ The date is carefully given, and the full lifetime of the ‘god.’ The burial of the Apis was on a scale of regal magnificence, and a national mourning of seventy days was observed. The finding of a successor [81] and his installation was celebrated with the wildest exultation, and with national rejoicing. Little room is left for the idea of symbol or sign; the sacred creature is an emanation of the Divine, is a ‘god,’ and as such the object of the grossest and most grotesque idolatry. ”

“ Manetho traces the cult of Apis to Kaiekhos, a king of the Second Dynasty, who appointed a chosen bull, Hap, to be a god; but Ælian ascribes this to Mena, the first historical king of Egypt.
Much of our knowledge concerning this cult is derived from Greek sources. Herodotus gives the following description of Apis: "He is the calf of a cow which is incapable of conceiving another offspring, and the Egyptians say that lightning descends upon the cow from heaven and that from thence it brings forth Apis. ”

“ Winds passing through a hen will on occasions impregnate her; and it seems no incredible thing, that the deity, though not after the fashion of a man, but by some other certain communication, fills a mortal creature with some divine conception. Nor is this my sense; but the Egyptians who say Apis was conceived by the influence of the moon, and make no question but that an immortal god may have communication with a mortal woman. ”

“ I should rather think so. He's filled with his own affairs, simply and solely. He's himself in all that comes out of him,- himself, just because he's beside himself. Come here! Now I'll show you another one, who's no less, since last evening, accordant with Reason. [To a FELLAH, with a mummy on his back.] King Apis, how goes it, my mighty lord? THE FELLAH [wildly, to PEER GYNT] .
Am I King Apis? PEER [getting behind the DOCTOR] .
I'm sorry to say I'm not quite at home in the situation ”

“ But the earliest history of that famous sanctuary is surrounded by such a thick growth of pious legends, that the most sagacious investigators have lost their way in it. Was Serapis of native origin, or was he imported from Sinope or Seleucia, or even from Babylon? Each of these opinions has found supporters very recently. Is his name derived from that of the Egyptian god Osiris-Apis, or from that of the Chaldean deity Sar-Apsi? ”

“ Thus they "worshipped the creature more than the Creator;" and were given up to idolatry beyond other countries, becoming the source of superstition to all the eastern nations. They paid particular honours to the serpent and crocodile, and to the Ibis, as a most useful animal. Apis was worshipped in the form of an ox or cow, and Osiris as a goat; and the souls of their superiour deities were supposed to reside in the stars or planets. ”

“ The priests drown him solemnly in the Nile and embalm his sacred body and celebrate his obsequies with special ceremonies. What a pity, my lord, that you have come too late! After the obsequies they seek the young Apis, they seek him throughout sacred Egypt. As a rule they find him immediately, for the godhead immediately becomes reincarnated in a new-born bull; and, if it omit to do so, the calamity is so great that the country is plunged into mourning and [155] the disaster foretells universal plagues. But Serapis Osiris loves his Egypt and but seldom delays the new incarnation. ”

“ At a great distance appeared with the same pomp the sheep of Thebes, the dog of Bubastis, the cat of Phœbe, the crocodile of Arsinoë, the goat of Mendes, and all the inferior gods of Egypt, who came to pay homage to the great ox, to the mighty Apis, as powerful as Isis, Osiris, and Horus, united together.
In the midst of the demi-gods, forty priests carried an enormous basket, filled with sacred onions. These were, it is true, gods, but they resembled onions very much. ”