Apis (2)

Apis Bull; an Egyptian deity with the physical characteristics of a bull; associated with the Greek bull-man, Epaphos (Epaphus).

Apis was sometimes depicted in the shape of a man with the head of a bull and as a bull with the disk of the Sun in his horns but his common shape was simply that of a bull; worshiped in Egypt as early as 3000 BCE as a symbol of fertility, then as Apis-Atum in relation to the Sun and finally becoming associated with the god Osiris as Osiris-Apis, guardian of the dead.

When the historian Herodotus (484?-425? BCE) was in Egypt, he encountered the priests of Apis examining and sacrificing an Apis Bull; the bull representing Apis had to be perfect in all ways and any imperfection would disqualify the sacrificial victim; an Apis Bull would be born at random intervals and the birth of a perfect bull was an occasion for celebration and sacrifice; the bull as doused in wine and the throat was cut; the body of the beast was flayed and eaten but the head was either thrown onto to Nile river or sold to any Greeks who happened to be nearby; the ritual of the sacrifice as intended to infuse the head of the bull with the evil of the worshipers and therefore could not be eaten; female cattle were never sacrificed because they were the Egyptian equivalent of the maiden Io, and thus sacred.

When the Persian king Kambyses (Cambyses) was in Egypt (circa 524 BCE), an Apis Bull was born and the Egyptians donned their best attire for the celebration; Kambyses assumed that the celebration was because of his recent military humiliations and accused the priests of mocking him; he had the sacred animal brought before him and stabbed it in the thigh with a dagger and ridiculed the priests for worshiping a frail and mortal deity; when the Apis Bull died, Kambyses proclaimed that anyone who continued the celebration would be killed.

The Apis Bull that Kambyses killed was actually just a calf; the animal was considered to be divine because it was born to an infertile cow which had been struck by lightening and then became pregnant; the calf was black with a white triangle on its forehead, a white eagle mark on its back, double hair on its tail and a knot under its tongue; the combination of these signs made it indisputable that the animal was sacred.

• Histories, book 2, chapters 38-39, 41, 153; book 3, chapters 27-29