"by archaeological evidence. The earliest and largest of all animal cults, the Apis bull cult considered the bull to be a symbol of strength and fertility, representing the creator gods Ptah and Osiris. Mummification was a key part in the worshipping of these animals. While alive, the bull would be housed in a special temple, lavishly pampered for its entire life. Priests believed that the Apis bull was a medium of communication between the two creator gods, so its movements were carefully observed and sometimes consulted as an oracle. These sacred animals were allowed to die a natural death unless"
"beasts Apis' importance increased over the centuries. During colonization of the conquered Egypt, Greek and Roman authors had much to say about Apis, the markings by which the black calf was recognized, the manner of his conception by a ray from heaven, his house at Memphis (with a court for his deportment), the mode of prognostication from his actions, his death, the mourning at his death, his costly burial, and the rejoicings throughout the country when a new Apis was found. Auguste Mariette's excavation of the Serapeum of Saqqara revealed the tombs of more than sixty animals, ranging from the"
"Apis (mythology) Apis (; Ancient Greek: Ἄπις) is the name of a figure, or several figures, appearing in the earliest antiquity according to Greek mythology and historiography. It is uncertain exactly how many figures of the name Apis are to be distinguished, particularly due to variation of their genealogies. A common element is that an Apis was an early king in the Peloponnesus that had a territory named after himself, and that Apis was often, but not always, ascribed an Egyptian origin. For the sake of convenience, the variant myths are presented here as if they dealt with separate characters."
"Apis (mythology) Apis (; Ancient Greek: Ἄπις) is the name of a figure, or several figures, appearing in the earliest antiquity according to Greek mythology and historiography. It is uncertain exactly how many figures of the name Apis are to be distinguished, particularly due to variation of their genealogies. A common element is that an Apis was an early king in the Peloponnesus that had a territory named after himself, and that Apis was often, but not always, ascribed an Egyptian origin. For the sake of convenience, the variant myths are presented here as if they dealt with separate characters."
"possible that this could be based in the different breeds of cattle herded at different times. In Egypt, the bull was worshiped as Apis, the embodiment of Ptah and later of Osiris. A long series of ritually perfect bulls were identified by the god's priests, housed in the temple for their lifetime, then embalmed and encased in a giant sarcophagus. A long sequence of monolithic stone sarcophagi were housed in the Serapeum, and were rediscovered by Auguste Mariette at Saqqara in 1851. The bull was also worshipped as Mnevis, the embodiment of Atum-Ra, in Heliopolis. ""Ka"" in Egyptian is both"
"to bury one of the animals in the fourth year of Cambyses II. The Apis was a protector of the deceased and linked to the pharaoh. Horns embellish some of the tombs of ancient pharaohs and Apis often was depicted on private coffins as a powerful protector. As a form of Osiris, ruler of the underworld, it was believed that to be under the protection of Apis would give the person control over the four winds in the afterlife. According to Arrian, Apis was one of the Egyptian deities Alexander the Great propitiated by offering a sacrifice during his seizure"
"Anubis Anubis (; , Egyptian: ""jnpw"", Coptic: ""Anoup"") is the Greek name of a god associated with mummification and the afterlife in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head. Archeologists have identified Anubis's sacred animal as an Egyptian canid, the African golden wolf. Like many ancient Egyptian deities, Anubis assumed different roles in various contexts. Depicted as a protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3100 – c. 2890 BC), Anubis was also an embalmer. By the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055 – 1650 BC) he was replaced by Osiris"
"From the earliest times, the bull was lunar in Mesopotamia (its horns representing the crescent moon). In Egypt, the bull was worshiped as Apis, the embodiment of Ptah and later of Osiris. A long series of ritually perfect bulls were identified by the god's priests, housed in the temple for their lifetime, then embalmed and encased in a giant sarcophagus. A long sequence of monolithic stone sarcophagi was housed in the Serapeum, and was rediscovered by Auguste Mariette at Saqqara in 1851. The bull was also worshipped as Mnevis, the embodiment of Atum-Ra, in Heliopolis. ""Ka"" in Egyptian is both"
"be a serpent at its base, fitting the Egyptian symbol of sovereignty, the uraeus. With his (i.e., Osiris') wife, Isis, and their son (at this point in history) Horus (in the form of ""Harpocrates""), Serapis won an important place in the Greek world, reaching Ancient Rome, with Anubis being identified as Cerberus. The cult survived until 385, when Christians destroyed the Serapeum of Alexandria, and subsequently, the cult was forbidden by the Edict of Thessalonica. The pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk uses Apis as its logo. Apis (deity) In ancient Egyptian religion, Apis or Hapis (, reconstructed as Old Egyptian with"
"Thus, Isis was also regarded as Min's consort. The same ideology of kingship may lie behind a tradition, found in a few texts, that Horus raped Isis. Amun, the foremost Egyptian deity during the Middle and New Kingdoms, also took on the role of Kamutef, and when he was in this form, Isis often acted as his consort. Apis, a bull that was worshipped as a living god at Memphis, was said to be Isis's son, fathered by a form of Osiris known as Osiris-Apis. The mother of each Apis bull was thus known as the ""Isis cow"". A story"
"Asp (reptile) ""Asp"" is the modern Anglicisation of the word """"aspis"","" which in antiquity referred to any one of several venomous snake species found in the Nile region. It is believed that ""aspis"" referred in Egyptian mythology to what is now known as the Egyptian cobra. Throughout dynastic and Roman Egypt, the asp was a symbol of royalty. Moreover, in both Egypt and Greece, its potent venom made it useful as a means of execution for criminals who were thought deserving of a more dignified death than that of typical executions. In some stories of Perseus after killing Medusa, the"
"of Apis) and from the Aztecs to the Yoruba. The religion of the ancient Egyptians forbid the sacrifice of animals other than sheep, bulls, calves, male calves and geese. Animal sacrifice is still practiced today by the followers of Santería and other lineages of Orisa as a means of curing the sick and giving thanks to the Orisa (gods). However, in Santeria, such animal offerings constitute an extremely small portion of what are termed ""ebos""—ritual activities that include offerings, prayer and deeds. Christians from some villages in Greece also sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a practice known as kourbània."
"Serapeum of Saqqara The Serapeum of Saqqara is a serapeum located north west of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, a necropolis near Memphis in Lower Egypt. It was a burial place of Apis bulls, sacred bulls that were incarnations of the ancient Egyptian deity Ptah. It was believed that the bulls became immortal after death as ""Osiris Apis"", a name that appears in Coptic as , ""Userhapi"", which was borrowed in Greek as , ""Serapis"", in the Hellenistic period. The most ancient burials found at this site date back to the reign of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of"
"Aani In Ancient Egyptian religion, Aani is the dog-headed ape sacred to the Egyptian god Thoth. ""One of the Egyptian names of the Cynocephalus Baboon, which was sacred to the god Thoth."" The Egyptian hieroglyphic word for ""baboon"" is ""jꜥnꜥ"" in the German style of transliteration. Attested roughly forty times in extant literature, this word refers to the animal itself. Many Egyptian gods can manifest in a baboon aspect or have other associations with the animal, including Animal iconography does not imply the Egyptians identified the animals concerned as deities themselves. Rather, the animal was an icon, or a large"
"Apidium The genus Apidium (from Latin, a diminutive of the Egyptian bull god, Apis, as the first fossils were thought to be from a type of a cow) is that of at least three extinct primates living from the late Eocene to the early Oligocene, roughly 30 million years ago. ""Apidium"" fossils are common in the Fayoum deposits of Egypt. Fossils of the earlier species, ""Apidium moustafai"", are rare; fossils of the later species ""Apidium phiomense"" are fairly common. ""Apidium"" and its fellow members of the Parapithecidae family are stem anthropoids that possess all the hallmarks of modern Anthropoidea. Their"
"hatred for Desdemona as being full of ""aspics' tongues"" in Shakespeare's play ""Othello"". (Act 3, scene iii) Asp (reptile) ""Asp"" is the modern Anglicisation of the word """"aspis"","" which in antiquity referred to any one of several venomous snake species found in the Nile region. It is believed that ""aspis"" referred in Egyptian mythology to what is now known as the Egyptian cobra. Throughout dynastic and Roman Egypt, the asp was a symbol of royalty. Moreover, in both Egypt and Greece, its potent venom made it useful as a means of execution for criminals who were thought deserving of a"
"is far more likely that some burials of sacred bulls are waiting to be discovered and excavated. Serapeum of Saqqara The Serapeum of Saqqara is a serapeum located north west of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, a necropolis near Memphis in Lower Egypt. It was a burial place of Apis bulls, sacred bulls that were incarnations of the ancient Egyptian deity Ptah. It was believed that the bulls became immortal after death as ""Osiris Apis"", a name that appears in Coptic as , ""Userhapi"", which was borrowed in Greek as , ""Serapis"", in the Hellenistic period. The most ancient"
"by the Libu and Tinhu tribes, corresponds roughly with the area of modern Libya. In Egyptian mythology, as god of the oases, Ash was associated with Set, who was originally a god of the desert. The first known reference to Ash dates to the Protodynastic Period, and he continued to be mentioned as late as the 26th Dynasty. Ash was usually depicted as a human, whose head was one of the desert creatures, variously being shown as a lion, vulture, hawk, snake, or the unidentified Set-animal. Some depictions of Ash show him as having multiple heads, unlike other Egyptian deities,"
"deities ever associated with her symbol. When the disk was depicted on his head with his horns below and the triangular marking on his forehead, an ankh was suggested. That symbol always was closely associated with Hathor. Early on, Apis was the herald () of Ptah, the chief deity in the area around Memphis. As a manifestation of Ptah, Apis also was considered to be a symbol of the king, embodying the qualities of kingship. In the region where Ptah was worshiped, cattle exhibited white patterning on their mainly black bodies, and so a belief grew up that the Apis"
"sometimes received portions of the unusually large offerings given to the gods on these occasions. At many sacred sites, the Egyptians worshipped individual animals which they believed to be manifestations of particular deities. These animals were selected based on specific sacred markings which were believed to indicate their fitness for the role. Some of these cult animals retained their positions for the rest of their lives, as with the Apis bull worshipped in Memphis as a manifestation of Ptah. Other animals were selected for much shorter periods. These cults grew more popular in later times, and many temples began raising"
"Apis explicitly identified as Osiris in full) had been the tutelary deity of the village of Rhacotis, before it suddenly expanded into the great capital of ""Alexandria"". Being introduced by the Greeks, understandably, the statue depicted a fully human figure resembling Hades or Pluto, both being kings of the Greek underworld. The figure was enthroned with the ""modius"", which is a basket or a grain-measure, on his head, a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. He also held a sceptre, indicating rulership, and Cerberus, gatekeeper of the underworld, rested at his feet. It also had what appeared to"
"Apus Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means ""without feet"" in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598, it was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 ""Uranometria"". The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756. The five brightest stars are all reddish in hue. Shading the others at apparent magnitude 3.8 is Alpha Apodis, an orange giant that"
"Aegyptopithecus Aegyptopithecus (""Egyptian ape"", from Greek ""Αίγυπτος"" ""Egypt"" and ""πίθηκος"" ""ape"") is an early fossil catarrhine that predates the divergence between hominoids (apes) and cercopithecids (Old World monkeys). It is known from a single species, Aegyptopithecus zeuxis, which lived around 30 million years ago in the early part of the Oligocene epoch. It likely resembled modern-day New World monkeys, and was about the same size as a modern howler monkey, which is about long. ""Aegyptopithecus"" fossils have been found in the Jebel Qatrani Formation of modern-day Egypt. ""Aegyptopithecus"" is believed to be a stem-catarrhine, a crucial link between Eocene and"
"Epaphus In Greek mythology, Epaphus (; ), also called Apis, was a king of Egypt. Epaphus was the son of Zeus and Io. The name/word Epaphus means ""Touch"". This refers to the manner in which he was conceived, by the touch of Zeus' hand. He was born in Euboea, in the cave Boösaule (Herodotus, Strabo), or, according to others, in Egypt, on the river Nile, after the long wanderings of his mother. He was then concealed by the Curetes, by the request of Hera, but Io sought and afterward found him in Syria. Epaphus is regarded in the myths as"
"Hapi (Son of Horus) Hapi, sometimes transliterated as Hapy, is one of the Four sons of Horus in ancient Egyptian religion, depicted in funerary literature as protecting the throne of Osiris in the Underworld. Hapi was the son of Heru-ur and Isis or Serqet. He is not to be confused with another god of the same name. He is commonly depicted with the head of a hamadryas baboon, and is tasked with protecting the lungs of the deceased, hence the common depiction of a hamadryas baboon head sculpted as the lid of the canopic jar that held the lungs. Hapi"
"hieroglyph, representing a god. Aani In Ancient Egyptian religion, Aani is the dog-headed ape sacred to the Egyptian god Thoth. ""One of the Egyptian names of the Cynocephalus Baboon, which was sacred to the god Thoth."" The Egyptian hieroglyphic word for ""baboon"" is ""jꜥnꜥ"" in the German style of transliteration. Attested roughly forty times in extant literature, this word refers to the animal itself. Many Egyptian gods can manifest in a baboon aspect or have other associations with the animal, including Animal iconography does not imply the Egyptians identified the animals concerned as deities themselves. Rather, the animal was an"
"until the beginning of the New Kingdom. Worship of Bes spread as far north as the area of Syria, and later into the Roman and Achaemenid Empires. Modern scholars such as James Romano claim that in its earliest inception Bes was a representation of a lion rearing up on its hind legs. After the Third Intermediate Period, Bes is often seen as just the head or the face, often worn as amulets. Bes was a household protector, becoming responsible – throughout ancient Egyptian history – for such varied tasks as killing snakes, fighting off evil spirits, watching after children, and"
"it was commissioned for the gods of Memphis at the heart of the great temple. The Temple of Apis in Memphis was the main temple dedicated to the worship of the bull Apis, considered to be a living manifestation of Ptah. It is detailed in the works of classical historians such as Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo, but its location has yet to be discovered amidst the ruins of the ancient capital. According to Herodotus, who described the temple's courtyard as a peristyle of columns with giant statues, it was built during the reign of Psamtik I. The Greek historian Strabo"
"Apep Apep ( or ; also spelled Apepi or Aapep) or Apophis (; ) was the ancient Egyptian deity who embodied chaos (""ı͗zft"" in Egyptian) and was thus the opponent of light and Ma'at (order/truth). He appears in art as a giant serpent. His name is reconstructed by Egyptologists as *ʻAʼpāp(ī), as it was written ""ꜥꜣpp(y)"" and survived in later Coptic as ""Aphōph"". Apep was first mentioned in the Eighth Dynasty, and he was honored in the names of the Fourteenth Dynasty king 'Apepi and of the Greater Hyksos king Apophis. Ra was the solar deity, bringer of light, and"
"beard, Hapi was pictured with pendulous breasts and a large belly, as representations of the fertility of the Nile. He also was usually given blue or green skin, representing water. Other attributes varied, depending upon the region of Egypt in which the depictions exist. In Lower Egypt, he was adorned with papyrus plants and attended by frogs, present in the region, and symbols of it. Whereas in Upper Egypt, it was the lotus and crocodiles which were more present in the Nile, thus these were the symbols of the region, and those associated with Hapi there. Hapi often was pictured"
"by scholars as having had the form of a giant serpent, but several scholars have pointed out that this shape ""cannot be imputed to Tiamat with certainty"" and she seems at have at least sometimes been regarded as anthropomorphic. Nonetheless, in some texts, she seems to be described with horns, a tail, and a hide that no weapon can penetrate, all features which suggest she was conceived as some form of dragoness. In Egyptian mythology, Apep is a giant serpent who resides in the Duat, the Egyptian Underworld. The Bremner-Rhind papyrus, written in around 310 BC, preserves an account of"
"In Greco-Roman Egypt, the male Sopdet was conflated with the dog-headed Anubis. Sopdet Sopdet is the ancient Egyptian name of the star Sirius and its personification as an Egyptian goddess. Known to the Greeks as Sothis, she was conflated with Isis as a goddess and Anubis as a god. The exact pronunciation of ancient Egyptian is uncertain, as vowels were not recorded until a very late period. In modern transcription, her name usually appears as Sopdet (, .""Triangle"" or ""Sharp One"") after the known Greek and Latin form Sothis (, ""Sō̂this""). During the early period of Egyptian civilization, the heliacal"
"goddess Inanna. ""Pisces"" is the Latin word for ""Fish."" It is one of the earliest zodiac signs on record, with the two fish appearing as far back as 2300 BCE on an Egyptian coffin lid. According to one Greek myth, Pisces represents the fish, sometimes represented by koi fish, into which Aphrodite (also considered Venus) and her son Eros (also considered Cupid) transformed in order to escape the monster Typhon. Typhon, the ""father of all monsters,"" had been sent by Gaia to attack the gods, which led Pan to warn the others before himself changing into a goat-fish and jumping"