Cleveland Museum of Art

Apis Bull

Date

400–100 BCE

Medium

serpentinite

Culture

Egypt, Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–395 CE), Ptolemaic dynasty (305–30 BCE)

Department

Egyptian and Ancient Near Eastern Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Sacred animal cults have a long history in ancient Egypt, but they became even more important in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Because each god could incarnate himself into any animal species, beasts of all sorts--dogs, cats, ibises, crocodiles--were protected, venerated, mummified, and collected by the thousands in specialized animal cemeteries. The sacred bull cults were different. Apis, the bull of Memphis, was a god in his own right. But he was also associated with other deities, such as Ptah, the god of Memphis, and Osiris, in the form of Osiris-Apis (or Serapis). Statues and reliefs always show him crowned with a sun disk and cobra. When an Apis bull died, he was given a burial fit for a king in an area of the Memphite cemetery known as the Serapeum. A larger base, likely inscribed, may have hidden the rough, unfinished lower edges of this statue.

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