Insight Guides Egypt (Travel Guide eBook) by Insight Guides

Author:Insight Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Travel, Egypt
Publisher: Apa Publications
Published: 2020-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

When the cult of Serapis, combining the characteristics of Osiris and Apis (identified with the Greeks’ Zeus), was invented under the Ptolemies, the Funerary Temple of Apis became a centre of pilgrimage for Greeks and Romans.

THE SERAPEUM

Below the rest house is the Serapeum H [map], the catacomb of the sacred Apis bull, whose rites were witnessed by Herodotus during his 5th-century BC sojourn in Egypt. Inside the labyrinthine tunnels, the mummified bulls were buried in huge stone sarcophagi set in subterranean galleries.

Situated immediately to the north are graveyards containing the mummies of other animals: baboons, now extinct in Egypt, though they can still be found in the Sudan, and ibis (three species were known to the ancients, identified by modern experts as sacred, bald and glossy: for more information, click here). They are now very rare, though the name is frequently given locally to the cattle egret, which are seen everywhere in rural Egypt, often perched on the backs of water buffalo and cattle.

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