indeed, might be adduced to prove that the bull was used in this sense in contradistinction to the vulture, which represented the idea female.[1]
It would thus appear that Apis represented the Nile or Inundation, and the adjustment or regulating power of Phtha. His colour seems to have been generally pied black and white, in reference to the moon; to which the ibis, a pied bird, was also sacred, representing the alternate light and darkness of that luminary. On the coffin of Tenamen, an incense-bearing priest of Amen-Ra, the eponymous god of Thebes, Apis is represented as a pied bull, wearing on his head a disk and plumes, and coming out of a sekos, or shrine, placed on a granite hill. The inscription reads, "Said Phtha Socharis, who is lord of the West." The speech has never been inserted.[2] On the feet of coffins of the age of the twenty-sixth dynasty, Apis is often represented as a pied bull, without any attire, bearing on his back a mummy;[3] the inscriptions usually being, "Apis is carrying." This has been supposed, without, however, adequate proof, to represent Apis bearing the mummy of Osiris. The white bull, Ka-het, who walked, like the sacred bull of Brahma, in the festival of the god Khem, I have already mentioned. A black bull, having the name Mena (cattle), is the representation of Mnevis, the sacred bull of Thebes, which was sacred to Amen-Ra, or the Egyptian Jupiter. The bull, Pa-ka, that is, "The Bull,"[4] the Pacis of Macrobius, has also been figured by Champollion in his Pantheon. In the Ritual of the Dead is a bull and seven cows, whose name it was necessary that the deceased should know and pronounce.[5] They may be connected with the lunar phases.
The worship of the golden calf among the Jews was probably only a modification of the Apis worship. Traces of this bull worship extended from the Nile to the Euphrates. It still lingers in the mysteries of the Syrian Druses. It would appear that Baal, the Phœnician, sat on a calf, like the Jupiter Dolichenus of Commagene.[6] The enormous laver of the Temple of Solomon, called the Brazen Sea, stood on twelve
- ↑ Thus the vulture ends the word ses, mare, on the statistical tablet of Kamak, and the word neshn, a hind. Cf. Prisse, Mon. Eg. Pl. xv. bis.; Lepsius, Auswahl. tab. xii. Cf. however, Champ, Dict., p. 117,
- ↑ Birch, Gallery, p. 52.
- ↑ Coffin of Pefaakhons, Egyptian Room, Brit. Mus., No. 6681, 6691; boards of coffins, Brit. Mus., Nos. 6940, 6941.
- ↑ Champollion, Grammaire Egyptienne, p. 126.
- ↑ Lepsius, Todtenbuch, taf. lxix., 1. .9, and taf. lxix , c. 148.
- ↑ Muller, Handbuch, s. 294; Marini, Atti di Frat. Arv. II., p. 539; Bottiger Kunstmyth, I., s. 308, 313—330, taf. iv.
