Apis

See also: Apis (homonymy)

Apis is the Greek name of a bull crowned of the Egyptian Mythologie venerated as of the prehistoric time. The first traces of its worship are represented on rupestral engravings, it is then mentioned in the Textes of the Pyramids of the Ancient Empire and its worship will perdura until the Roman epoch. Apis is symbol of fertility, sexual power and physical force.

Its physical incarnation was venerated in all the country, and was kept with Memphis in a Apieum close to the large temple of Ptah. Apis was selected according to very strict criteria (perhaps twenty-nine), including inter alia, a black peeling, a white triangle on the face, a sign in the shape of vulture to the wings spread on the back, the double hairs of the tail and a sign in the shape of beetle under the language.

The legend wants that with its death, Apis réincarne in one of its congeneric, that the priests were charged to find. Thus, only one bull was venerated at the same time. The death of a Apis bull was an major event (which was repeated every fourteen years on average) and which led to seventy days a national mourning (the time of its momification). The funeral of Apis was sumptuous; embaumé, it was deposited in a sarcophagus and was buried in the Sérapéum de Saqqarah, an imposing tomb common arranged to the Nouvel Empire. The mother of Apis also had right has a preferential treatment, and was buried in a necropolis particular not far from the Iséum of Saqqarah.

With Memphis, Apis is initially the herald of the god Ptah, the creator, then is associated with its Bâ. Starting from the New Empire, it is also associated to the god Re, the life, and starts to be represented carrying the solar disk between its horns. To its death, Apis was compared to the god Osiris under the name of Osiris-Apis and is associated with the funerary worship. Thus, with the Low Time one finds it represented on the sarcophagi like a bull carrying the mummy of late on the back, and accompanying it to his tomb. At the time gréco-Roman, her funerary form of Osiris-Apis will be comparable (in particular in Alexandria) to the gods Pluton and Apollon in the shape of the god Sérapis. From where the name of the tomb of Apis, the Sérapéum.

It is represented in the shape of a bull carrying a solar disk between the horns and often also the Uræus.

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