Apis

Apis is a god you could feed. One bull at a time, identified by markings, housed at Memphis, consulted as an oracle, mourned nationally when it died and replaced after a search — and then mummified and put in a granite sarcophagus in a rock-cut gallery at Saqqara with all its predecessors. The Serapeum is the result: a corridor of enormous stone boxes, one god per box. Of the three great bull cults this is the largest and the best documented, and the registry had none of them.

Domains

• divination
• kingship

Powers

• to answer a question by which of two stalls the bull walks into

Relations

• subordinate to: PtahPtah's living form at Memphis — a god one could go and look at, standing in a stall and eating.Reference treatment of the Apis bull as the earthly manifestation of Ptah at Memphis. (secondary)

Sources

• Apis is the sacred bull of Memphis, the living manifestation of Ptah, an oracular god embodied in one animal at a time, mummified at death and buried in the Serapeum at Saqqara.: Reference treatments of the Apis bull, of the Egyptian bull cults and of the Serapeum. (secondary)