The Intimate Bond by Brian Fagan Page A

with special festivals in honor of Hapi (the Greek name is Apis), known as the Running of Hapi, as early as the First Dynasty, around 2900 BCE . 2 But cattle cults go back much further in Egyptian history, perhaps to the time when herders from the increasingly arid Sahara Desert brought their cattle cults and notions of leaders as strong bulls to the Nile long before 3000 BCE . Hapi may have started as a fertility god connected to grain and herds. The sacred bull symbolized the strength and virility of the pharaoh, who was often called “strong bull of his mother Hathor,” the cow goddess and mistress of the West, the realm of the dead.
    Over the centuries, the cult of the sacred Apis bull, the personification of the god Ptah, creator god of Memphis, became deeply ingrained in Egyptian life. The great pharaoh Ramesses II (who reigned 1279–1213 BCE ) elevated the Apis cult to new heights. He ordered the construction of the Serapeum, an underground maze of burial chambers for Apis bulls near the royal capital at Memphis in Lower Egypt, which remained in use for many centuries 3 (see sidebar “Rediscovering the Serapeum”). Every living Apis bull had the same coloring: black with a white diamond mark on the forehead. A bull born with such markings lived a pampered existence in Ptah’s temple. Apis was an oracle and a prophet, a source of wisdom, attended by priests who monitored its every move. When an Apis bull died or was sacrificed in its mid- to late twenties (the age of the god Osiris when he perished), the state plunged into mourning. The discovery of a new Apis bull with the correct markings was an occasion for rejoicing.
    Rediscovering the Serapeum
    In 24 CE , the Greek geographer Strabo mentioned that the Apis bulls were buried in an underground sepulcher known as the Serapeum, at the end of an avenue of sphinxes that was constantly buried by drifting sand. Apis was an oracle and a prophet, so powerful that his cult survived until almost 400 CE , into late Roman times. Once the popular cult passed into oblivion, the Serapeum, with its mummified bulls, was effectively lost until 1850, when a twenty-nine-year-old Frenchman, Auguste Mariette (1821–1881), became curious about fifteen sphinxes adorning the gardens of wealthy Alexandrians and Cairenes. At the time, Mariette worked for the Louvre, in Paris, which had sent him out to acquire Coptic and other historic manuscripts. While waiting for permission to export his collection, he inquired about the sphinxes, learned they came from the Saqqara necropolis, on the west bank of the Nile. Mariette remembered Strabo’s words, set thirty men to work and uncovered 140 sphinxes, on the very avenue described eight centuries earlier by the ancient geographer. At the end, he found the entrance of the Serapeum, buried in sand that was “so to speak fluid.” It was like excavating water. The discovery caused an international sensation.
    The tomb of Apis lay behind a magnificent sandstone door. Inside stood the great sandstone coffins of the Apis bulls, their lids removed by tomb robbers centuries earlier. A great deal of material and numerous precious artifacts remained, however. The terms of Marquette’s permit required that he hand over his discoveries to the Egyptian authorities, so he quietly packed the cases destined for the Louvre at the bottom of a dark pit at night, while showing disappointed Egyptian officials the empty tombs in daytime.
    Mariette spent four laborious years recovering a multitude of artifacts and parts of mummified bulls. He was lucky enough to find one undisturbed Apis burial in a sealed niche, dating to the time of Ramesses II. The fingerprints of the worker who’d put the last stone in place could still be seen in the plaster. Even the footprints of the funerary workers had survived in a dusty corner. The sarcophagus contained both the undisturbed bull mummy and rich offerings of gold and jewelry. In his