Читать книгу The Herodotus Encyclopedia - Группа авторов - Страница 493

R. DREW GRIFFITH

Queen’s University at Kingston, Ontario

Apis (Eg. Ḥpw) is the sacred bull of MEMPHIS, worshipped since the 1st Dynasty in EGYPT as a fertility god. When each Apis died, he was embalmed and buried, and the priests chose a successor based on a fixed set of physical signs: he must be all black except for a white square on his forehead and on his back must be the form of an eagle. Greeks identified him with Epaphus (2.38, 153), son of ZEUS and the cow‐formed girl, IO (Friis Johansen and Whittle 1980, 2: 42–45). The 26th Dynasty pharaoh PSAMMETICHUS I (Psamtik I, r. c. 664–610 BCE) built him a temple (2.153). As one of the many acts of MADNESS that Herodotus alleges—almost certainly without justification—CAMBYSES (II) of PERSIA perpetrated in Egypt, he fatally stabbed the Apis bull in the thigh, ridiculing the Egyptians for thinking that any being that could feel pain was a god (3.27–29; cf. Plut. de Is. et Os. 44 (Mor. 369)). Greeks, however, did believe gods feel pain (Apul. Met. 5.23 gives a list of instances; Ar. Ran. 634, which denies this, is a joke).

SEE ALSO: Apis (city); Cattle; Gods and the Divine