It is with Saqqarah in the west of the Mastaba of Ti that the Sérapéum was discovered by Auguste Mariette on November 1st 1851. The young researcher guided and inspired by the testimony of the ancient author and geographer Strabon released initially the Dromos and continuing this alley bordered of sphinx he then discovers the entry of the catacombs intended to shelter the momifiés bodies of the crowned bulls Apis.
The discovery made great noise in particular at that time where true a " drive out with the trésor" was organized and financed by the unceasingly rival governments of a imperial Europe and where Egyptology did not exist yet… This discovery will be one of the elements founders for Mariette in her will to stop this systematic plundering of the cultural richnesses of Egypt when it creates very first the Service of Egyptian antiquities.
The origin of this necropolis goes back to and its first masterly extension to the reign of Ramsès {{II}} which entrusted the reorganization of the funerary worship of the god to his son preferred Khâemouaset. Indeed one owes him the first catacombs especially arranged for the skins of the crowned bulls. Previously those were buried in surmounted individual tombs of a vault intended for its funerary worship as a Osiris-Apis. These catacombs will be increased then assisted by a news large gallery which will remain in service until the end of Antiquity and the disappearance of the worship of the crowned animals when the Roman Empire embraces Christianity like only religion of state.
Description
The unit formed at the time ptolémaïque and Roman a vast crowned perimeter connected to the valley by the famous dromos that Strabon described. Several vaults skirted this crowned alley which was borrowed by the processions at the time of the funeral of the god Apis. This way thus crossed the ancient necropolis on more than one kilometer, on the basis of the hill of the Bubastéïon, skirting the funerary complex of Téti, leaving on its left those of Ouserkaf and of Djoser, it was inserted always more in the west in the desert.
The way on the last quarter was bordered of various vaults and memorials built by the excessively pious people and personalities then, marking an elbow, ended on a kind of esplanade on which vaults and sanctuaries gréco-Roman were arranged with in particular the construction of a hemicycle dedicated to the principal authors and philosophical Greek. The statues discovered in this hemicycle are today preserved at the Egyptian Musée of Cairo and are for certain the only representations of these personalities which Antiquity delivered to us. Strange appearance of these famous thinkers, in a desert entirely devoted to the Egyptian worships, which correctly translates the will of the two cultures to join.
This hemicycle was next to a building of which it was to depend. It closed the esplanade and one baptized it the Temple Is . Further in north of the paved alley, a vault dedicated to Apis was put at the day still containing a statue life size of the god bull carrying a solar disk enclosed between its horns and decorated of a Uræus. This statue is preserved today at the Musée of Louvre.
The dromos continued then towards the enclosure of Sérapéum and was completed by a gate framed by laid down lions, monument built by Nectanébo {{Ier}}. It is besides with this Pharaon that one owes the majority of the sphinges which bordered this long processional way and which decorate today the collections of several large museums of Europe and of the the United States.
Temple devoted to Osiris-Apis it remains nothing visible today and it is quite difficult to have an idea of its width even if it is more than probable that it included/understood the traditional elements of the Egyptian temple, with pylons, course with gantries, Pronaos and Naos. Only the statements made at the time of Mariette make it possible to evaluate dimensions of the Téménos with an enclosure of more than 300 meters on sides thus opening in the east by this gate placed in the axis of the temple.
It is right at the entry of the principal temple that were the individual tombs arranged under and at the beginning of. Five hypogean individual surmounted by their vault of worship was released and idnetifiés. Each tomb consisted of a descending shaft leading to a funerary room with for two cases of the additional rooms. It was thus about true tomb which was dug and built in the honor of the god.
Within sight of the foundations released at the time of the first excavation campaigns, the temple was to measure more than 150 meters length for a width of almost 100 and had a double enclosing wall open on two axes. One principal of is in west prolonging the axis of the dromos, the other secondary opening in north on the nécopoles. Reliefs of various times were found in particular of the time of Nectanébo of which elements of a temple or a vault devoted to Isis which was associated with the mother of the god Apis.
The catacombs of Apis were under the temple of Apis. Today the principal element of this sanctuary is thus underground and consists of two galleries which the Egyptologists to differentiate them describe as " petite" and " grande".
- " small souterrains" thus were arranged under Ramsès {{II}} and were used until the beginning of. They followed a North-South development and contain seventeen rooms dug in the rock.
- " large souterrains" were inaugurated under the reign of Psammétique {{Ier}} and will be used until the end of Antiquity, according to an increased East-West axis several times. They contain them more than thirty rooms, unquestionable colossal, connected between them by corridors and passages. A great number of these caveaux always have large sarcophagi.
Thus, and from Ramsès {{II}}, each bull Apis had a vault which was especially dedicated to him in this large fall collective and whose access was walled once the mummy deposited in its sarcophagus. On this wall, one affixed steles dédicatoires which generally indicated the reign under which the bull had been born, his year of establishment in the temple of Ptah, his lifespan as well as the date of his burial, specifying the reign under which this ceremony took place. These steles are invaluable elements today because they make it possible to clarify reigns which royal annals did not preserve us or for which we have only few precise details. Moreover insofar as the majority of the ancient documents giving us lists of Pharaons go back to the Nouvel Empire and that these catacombs leave this period precisely these steles which cover all the end of the Egyptian antiquity are sometimes the only convincing elements whose Egyptologist lays out to know the durations of reigns, elements much more reliable to establish the chronology of this period of the history of the ancient Egypt than the only list allotted to Manéthon.
These steles also make it possible to somewhat moderate the stories brought back by the ancient authors over the Persian period which preceded the ptolémaïque time immediately. Indeed, not only one found Apis buried under the reign of Darius, but also under that of Cambyse, which shows that the history reported by Hérodote was somewhat influenced by the propaganda anti-Persian which at that time had course in the whole of the satrapies of the empire Achéménide. Propaganda learnedly orchestrated by the Greeks in particular…
Each bull was momifié and buried with ostentation in a solid mass sarcophagus. During the Nouvel Empire these sarcophagi were out of wood and for the majority did not survive their discovery, for the following periods these sarcophagi were cut in granite and weigh several tons. They always rest in caveaux large gallery. The bulls were buried with a funerary furniture near to that which one finds in the traditional Egyptian tombs. Jewels, Amulet S, Oushebti S, vases canopes, are as many objects funerary necessary to the momification and intended to facilitate the passage of the god in the occident, the world of deaths. Certain mummies of Apis were found intact and are today exposed with the Egyptian Musée of Cairo.
Sérapéum of Saqqarah has been the subject of work of restoration and consolidation for several years and is currently closed with the public.
Enigmas of Sérapéum de Saqqarah
Several points remain enigmatic since the discovery of Sérapéum of Saqqarah.
- the first point relates to the discovery with Auguste Mariette of a sarcophagus buried at the same time as the bull Apis buried in year 55 of the reign of Ramsès {{II}}. The conditions of this discovery and the nature of the objects found with this sarcophagus since gave various interpretations. Indeed, in 1851 it put at the day several intact burials of bulls crowned in the " small galerie" going up all with the reign of Ramsès {{II}}. Among those it thus put up to date a sarcophagus which sheltered a mummy (destroyed today) covered of princely jewels and prophylactic amulets intended to protect it dead in its voyage in beyond. These amulets bore the titles and the name of Khâemouaset.
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Other points unsolved until now:
- If one finds there the majority of the Apis buried since the reign of Amenhotep {{III}}, the necropolis of the crowned bulls which precedes this reign was still not updated. The latter point would try to prove for certain Egyptologists that it is this sovereign who would have initiated the worship of the crowned bull and for the first time would have created a necropolis to shelter the skins of the crowned bulls. However the worship of Apis preexisted to the reign of the father of Akhénaton. In the same way, if no Apis were found for the reign of this last, a bull was indeed buried under the reign of Toutânkhamon, and another under the reign of Aÿ or with the hinge of this reign and that of its successor Horemheb.
- the {{XIXe}} and S are well documented in the " small galerie" , on the other hand is curiously absent for it. No vault of Apis was found for the reigns of the Pharaon S of this dynasty, and the burials seem to begin again only from.
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