In Egypt, there were a number of sacred bulls who were associated with Osiris. Perhaps the most famous of all of these was the bull God known to the Egyptians as Hapi and to the Greeks as Apis. According to Aelian, Hapi was held in the greatest of honour from the time of the first Pharaoh (De Natura 11.10) while in all probability his cult stretched back to Predynastic times.
According to Herodotus, the Apis bull was conceived by lightning and was recognized by the following signs: "it is black, and has a square spot of white on its forehead, and on the back the figure of an eagle, and in the tail double hairs, and on the tongue a beetle." (3.28) Plutarch said that "on account of the great resemblance which the Egyptians imagine between Osiris and the moon, its more bright and shining parts being shadowed and obscured by those that are of darker hue, they call the Apis the living image of Osiris". (On Isis and Osiris, 43) The bull, Herodotus says, was "a fair and beautiful image of the soul of Osiris". Diodorus similarly states that Osiris manifested himself to men through successive ages as Apis. "The soul of Osiris migrated into this animal", he explains.
The fusion of Osiris and Apis was known as Asar-Apis, which became in Greek Sarapis or Serapis. It is often claimed that the cult of Serapis was invented by Ptolemy I in order to provide a deity which both his Greek and Egyptian subjects could worship in common. However, the union of Asar-Api is found in an inscription from the 18th Dynasty where he is hailed as "the great God, Khent-Amentet, the lord of life forever," - an equation which predates Alexander's conquest of Egypt by almost a thousand years. However, it wasn't until Ptolemaic times that the cult of this syncretic deity truly came to prominance. According to Plutarch (On Isis and Osiris, 28), Ptolemy Soter had a dream in which he beheld a huge statue. Afterwards he communicated his dream to certain close associates of his, who remembered seeing a statue exactly like it at Sinope. The King sent for the statue, and when it was shown to Timotheus, an Eleusinian priest, and Manetho an Egyptian, they said that it resembled the Greek Hades, because of the three-headed dog Kerberos which attended it, but also that it resembled Asar-Api. Ptolemy established the cult of Serapis at Alexandria, building a huge temple for him there which also possessed a library that was said to contain over 300,000 volumes. Serapis' worship was successful, in that both Greeks and Egyptians felt that they were worshipping their own native deity, but his cult really took off once it spread West into Rome, where it became one of the ancient world's most popular religions, patronized by Emperors such as Otho, Caligula (under whom the first Serapeum was built at Rome), and Gaius Julius Verus Maximinus, as well as people from all ranks of society. Serapis acquired the attributes and symbols of a number of Greek and Roman Gods - he was depicted in the traditional form of Zeus/Iuppiter, complete with long beard and lightning-bolts, from Asklepios he gained the power to heal and his serpent companions, from Helios he took the solar-crown and dominion of the heavens, from Hades he became Lord of the Underworld and gained Kerberos as a companion, and from Dionysos he was given a thyrsos, ivy, and the kantharos, as well as rule over nature. A number of authors came to equate Dionysos and Serapis, most notably Diodorus Siculus (1.25) and Plutarch (On Isis and Osiris, 28). However, Serapis and his origins in the Apis bull were not Osiris's only connection with this most holy and powerful of creatures.
Plutarch informs us that the Mnevis Bull, which was kept at Heliopolis was "second only to the Apis" and that "like Osiris, it was black in colour," (On Isis and Osiris, 34). In temple inscriptions the two are actually identified through the names "Mnevis-Osiris" and "Mnevis-Wennefer" (Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, 174). Ammianus Marcellinus claimed that the Mnevis was sacred to the Sun as Apis was sacred to the Moon, and in the Pyramid Texts he was regarded as the ba of Re and linked with Re-Atum, not unlike Osiris himself. In Utterance 307 we read, "I am the wild bull of the grassland, the bull with the great head who comes from Heliopolis. I come to you the wild bull of the grassland, for it is I who generates you, and continuously generates you."
In the vignettes of Chapter 148 of the Book of the Dead, Osiris is connected with Kai Imentet, the Bull of the West, or Heavenly Bull, who was said to be the husband of seven cows, which accompanied him in his travels.
Another bull connected with Osiris (and which suggests a strong link with Dionysos as well) was the sacred bull of Hermonthis, whose name was variously given as Pacis, Bacchis, Bakha and Onuphis. (The last, found in Aelian 8.11, was in all likelihood a corruption of Osiris Un-nefer, according to Budge.) The Bacchis bull was said to change its colour every hour of the day (Macrobius Saturnalia 1.26), and was regarded as "an image of the sun shining on the other side of the world, i.e. the Underworld." (E. A. Wallis Budge, Gods of the Egyptians vol II, pg 352.) He was further styled "Bull of the Mountain of the Sunrise, and the Lion of the Mountain of Sunset" providing an interesting link with Dionysos which runs deeper than the similarity of their names.
Dionysos was represented as having bull horns (Sophocles Fragment 959) and Ion of Chios refers to him as the "indominatble bull-faced boy" (Athenaios 2.35 d-e) like the author of Orphic Hymn 45 who invokes Dionysos as the "bull-faced God conceived in fire". The women of Elis sought Dionysos to come "storming on your bull's foot" and hailed him as the Axie Taure "Worthy Bull". In Euripides' Bacchae, the Theban maenads ask him to appear as a bull (1017) and Pentheus discovers that in place of the effiminant stranger he had thought he'd imprisoned in the palace, there is a mighty and ferocious bull in his place. At Pergamon and elsewhere, priests of Dionysos were called boukoloi and arkhiboukoloi (IPergamon nos. 485-88) and the sacred marriage of Dionysos and the Basillina was celebrated in the boukoleion or sacred cow-shed at Athens. (Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 3.5)
Copyright 2005 Sannion
All rights reserved
Posted with permission
Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/wargod/public_html/greek/rel/diosiris/bull.php on line 80
Warning: include(http://www.wargoddess.net/includes/back.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/wargod/public_html/greek/rel/diosiris/bull.php on line 80
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://www.wargoddess.net/includes/back.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/wargod/public_html/greek/rel/diosiris/bull.php on line 80
