The bull was an animal symbolically associated with the Egyptian king from early times, and different cults for bull gods are known in ancient Egypt. Although the cult of the Apis bull at Memphis may have existed as early as the Early Dynastic Period, the earliest individual bull burials discovered at Saqqara date to the later 18th Dynasty (reign of Amenhotep III). Subterranean galleries for burial of the Apis bulls, known as the Lesser Vaults, were begun at Saqqara late in the reign of Rameses II and were in use until the Greater Vaults were begun in the early 26th Dynasty under Psamtek I. During the Saite Dynasty the Apis bull cult and other animal cults had enormous resources invested in them, which continued through Ptolemaic times.
Figure 9.7 Plan of the Serapeum at Saqqara. Source: K. A. Bard (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London: Routledge, 1999, p. 715. Drawing by Michael Jones. Reprinted by permission of Routledge
The Serapeum, where the Apis bulls were buried, is located to the northwest of Djoser’s Step Pyramid. In 1851 Auguste Mariette began excavating at Saqqara intent on finding the Serapeum Way, the east-west processional route across Saqqara leading to the Apis burial galleries - at the time known only from classical sources. Mariette excavated the galleries and uncovered a huge number of artifacts associated with the processional route (see Figures 9.7 and 9.8). Two ships were sent from France to transport the artifacts to Europe; most are now in the Louvre Museum.
The Serapeum Way was begun in the 26th Dynasty, and in the 30th Dynasty 134 sphinxes were placed along the route. During the Ptolemaic Dynasty Hellenistic statues of 11 Greek philosophers and writers were placed near the end of this route. Among Mariette’s finds were hundreds of royal stelae, which provide information about the Apis bull cult. Dates are often given for the bull’s birth, its installation in the Temple of Ptah in Memphis, and its death and burial, when the bull-god was mourned throughout Egypt.
About 450 meters to the northeast of the Serapeum Walter Emery found underground galleries with the burials of mummified ibises while excavating much earlier tombs in North Saqqara in 1964. To the north of this are galleries for burials of the Isis cows (mothers of the Apis bulls), and there are also subterranean galleries with mummified baboons, falcons, and more ibises (see Figure 9.9). Subsequent investigations of the birds in the North Ibis catacomb have shown that huge numbers of mummified ibises in pots were stacked there, while the falcon/hawk remains buried in pots that took up much more space in the falcon/hawk catacomb often contained tree twigs and bird feathers wrapped in linen, and not real bird mummies.
Also in the area of North Saqqara with the animal burials are the remains of a temple complex built in the 30th Dynasty by Nectanebo I and Nectanebo II over an earlier Saite structure. The so-called “Cemetery of Cats” on the eastern edge of the Saqqara
Figure 9.8 Granite sarcophagus of a sacred Apis bull, buried in the underground gallery of the Serapeum at Saqqara. Picture taken in 1997. © Photo12.com - Jean Guichard
Escarpment, where Alain-Pierre Zivie has been excavating New Kingdom tombs (see 8.10), was associated with a temple of the cat-goddess Bastet (the Bubastieion), to the north of which were burials of mummified jackals associated with a temple of Anubis (the Anubieion).
Great numbers of pilgrims came to these temples, which supported large communities of priests and other temple personnel. Pilgrims’ petitions to temple oracles were written by scribes, and there were specialists such as astrologers and interpreters of dreams. Much of this evidence is Ptolemaic, and these cults continued to be important in Greco-Roman times. The pilgrims left the mummified animals (both real and faked) as offerings to these cults, which may have been associated with the Osirian cycle of life, death, and rebirth - and associated concepts of fertility and procreation.
Figure 9.9 View of the gallery with mummified falcons, Saqqara
Outside the Ramessid Temple of Ptah at Memphis is a site known as the embalming house of Apis, considerably to the southeast of the Anubieion at Saqqara, from where the processional route led westward to the Serapeum. In the 1980s British archaeologist Michael Jones investigated the embalming house, which was first uncovered in 1941 by Egyptian archaeologists Mustafa el-Amir and Ahmed Badawy. The American architect John Dimick, who worked with German Egyptologist Rudolph Anthes in the 1950s, identified the limestone and travertine slabs at the site as the platforms on which the Apis bull was embalmed. Jones suggests that mummification of these huge animals may have taken place there, after which they were probably placed on the stone “beds,” decorated in relief with lions, for purification ceremonies and other rites.
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