Apis- Egyptian CreatureCreature · Beast"Herald of Ptah"
Also known as: Ḥp, Hapis, and Hapi-ankh
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Description
At any given time, only one bull in all of Egypt was the Apis — identified at birth by a white diamond on its forehead, a scarab-shaped mark under its tongue, and a vulture pattern on its back. This single animal was Ptah's living soul walking the earth at Memphis.
Mythology & Lore
The One Bull
Apis was not a species but a single animal: the living ba of Ptah, the creator god of Memphis. When the sacred markings appeared on a calf, a black hide bearing the white diamond and the scarab, that calf was brought to Memphis with ceremony and installed in quarters beside Ptah's temple. Some texts say the Apis was conceived when a ray of celestial fire descended upon the cow that bore him.
The bull served as Ptah's oracle. Children who smelled its breath gained the power of divination. During the Running of the Apis, the bull was released to run before the pharaoh. Its passage renewed the fertility of the land.
Seventy Days and Sixty Tons
When an Apis bull died, Egypt mourned. The body was mummified over seventy days, the same period given to pharaohs, and interred in a massive stone sarcophagus in the Serapeum at Saqqara. Some of these granite sarcophagi weigh over sixty tons. Auguste Mariette discovered the Serapeum in 1851: burials spanning from Amenhotep III through the Ptolemaic period, centuries of divine bulls laid to rest in darkness beneath the desert.
After the burial, priests searched Egypt for a new calf bearing the sacred marks. The deceased Apis merged with Osiris as Osiris-Apis, later Hellenized as Serapis. The living god became a dead god became a new god, and somewhere in Egypt a calf was always being born with the right marks on its body.