The cult was said
to have been intro-
duced by Mena
(1st Dynasty), the
most ancient dis-
coveries of his
worship being at
Memphis, though
another story says
that it was intro-
duced into Mem-
phis from Heliopo-
lis in the Ilnd Dynasty. But it was not until later
times that the Apis bull became of so much import-
ance. Eenouf says : ** The triumph of the symbol
over the thought is most sensibly visible in the
development of the worship of the Apis bull." The
Apis symbolized ** the second hfe of Ptah," the god of
Memphis. He was born of a cow, to whom a deity
had descended in the form of lightning or a ray of
moonlight. According to Herodotus he was black,
with a square .white spot on the forehead ; on his back
was the figure of an eagle, in the tail double hairs,
and on the tongue a beetle. The priests searched for
such an animal throughout Egypt, and when found
he was brought first to Nicopolis, in Lower Egypt,
and then with great pomp and ceremony to Memphis.
When he died, the body was embalmed and put in an
enormous sarcophagus. The so-called Serapeum at
Sakkara is a great Apis mausoleum, where numbers
of these sacred bulls were buried. The stelae that
covered a large part of the walls of this vast tomb
were of immense importance historically, as giving the



EGYPTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY 23

dates of birth and burial of the bulls, that is to say
the exact year in a king's reign. Apis was repre-
sented with a disk and uraeus between the horns.
It was supposed that, at his death — like a human
being — he became one with Osiris.
