Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis and his omens

Among the Egyptian deities that most impressed Greek and Roman travellers, none was as tangible as Apis. He was not a statue but a living bull, carefully chosen, housed in an enclosure at Memphis and worshipped as a manifestation of the god Ptah. His behaviour was closely watched and interpreted as an omen, so much so that for foreigners Apis became one of the most unusual oracles of Egypt.

The marks of the divine bull

Herodotus, in the third book of the Histories, describes the signs by which the new Apis was recognised. The calf had to be black, with a square white mark on the forehead, the figure of an eagle on its back, double hairs on its tail and a mark shaped like a scarab under its tongue. According to the historian, the Egyptians believed it was conceived by a ray of light descending from the sky upon its mother.

When the bull died, the whole country mourned until a successor was found. The dead animals were mummified and buried with great solemnity in the necropolis of Saqqara. In 1850 the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette discovered the Serapeum, a series of underground galleries with enormous stone sarcophagi, along with many stelae dedicated by worshippers.

Cambyses and the wounding of Apis

Herodotus tells a dramatic episode: Cambyses, the Persian king who conquered Egypt, supposedly struck Apis in the thigh with a dagger, mocking the Egyptians for worshipping an animal. The bull is said to have died of the wound, and the king's later madness was interpreted as divine punishment. Cambyses himself, according to Herodotus, died from a wound in the thigh, in the very spot where he had struck the god.

Egyptian documents, however, cast doubt on this version. An inscription from the Serapeum records the honourable burial of an Apis that died precisely during the reign of Cambyses, a sign that the ruler respected the cult, at least formally. Many historians therefore believe that Herodotus' account reflects the hostility of later Egyptian tradition towards the conqueror.

Omens in food and enclosure

Pliny the Elder, in the Natural History, describes the ways in which Apis gave omens. The bull had two chambers, and his entering one or the other was considered a good or bad sign. He also gave private answers by taking food from the hand of the person consulting him. Pliny recalls that Apis refused the food offered by Germanicus, who died not long afterwards.

The same author reports that groups of boys followed the bull singing, and that some of them, as if seized by sudden inspiration, announced future events. Strabo, who visited Memphis in the Augustan age, confirms that Apis was shown to visitors in a courtyard next to his enclosure, and that his mother's stall stood close by.

The cult of Apis survived for a long time, intertwining in the Ptolemaic period with that of Serapis, a deity born from the fusion of Osiris and Apis. For Greeks and Romans, the bull of Memphis was the clearest example of a divination tied not to inspired words, but to the observation of a living being regarded as divine.