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A temple of surpassing magnificence was also erected there in honor of the god, and at every place where one of his limbs had been found minor temples and tombs were built to commemorate the event. Osiris became after that the tutelar deity of the Egyptians. His soul was supposed always to inhabit the body of the bull Apis, and at his death to transfer itself to his successor.
On the death of this bull, whether it occurred in the course of nature or by violence, the whole land was filled with sorrow and lamentations, which lasted until his successor was found. We find the following item in one of the newspapers of the day: "The Tomb of Apis. The excavations going on at Memphis bid fair to make that buried city as interesting as Pompeii.
At the expiration of this term the priests repaired at new moon with great pomp, to his habitation, and saluted him Apis. He was placed in a vessel magnificently decorated and conveyed down the Nile to Memphis, where a temple, with two chapels and a court for exercise, was assigned to him.
The Todas of S. India abstain from the flesh of their domestic animal, the buffalo; but once a year they sacrifice a bull calf, which is eaten in the forest by the adult males. Cattle. Cattle are respected by many pastoral peoples; they live on milk or game, and the killing of an ox is a sacrificial function. Conspicuous among Egyptian animal cults was that of the bull, Apis.
Cambyses arrived at the city where Apis was kept at a time when the priests were celebrating some sacred occasion with festivities and rejoicings.
The dispute as to which temple should be assigned as the residence of the newly-found Apis gave Hadrian much to do. From time immemorial this sacred bull had been kept in the temple of Ptah at Memphis, but this venerable city of the Pyramids had been outstripped by Alexandria, and the temple of Serapis outvied that at Memphis in the province of Sokari, tenfold in size and in magnificence.
Their high withers, their broad dewlaps, their clean limbs, their small hoofs, shining like agate, their tails with the tuft carefully combed, showed that they were thorough-bred and that hard field-work had never deformed them. They exhibited the majestic placidity of Apis, the sacred bull, when it receives homage and offerings.
"Apis," says Herodotus, "is a young bull, whose hair is black, on his forehead a white triangle, on his back an eagle, with a beetle under his tongue and with the hair of his tail double." Ovid says he is of various colors. Plutarch says he has a crescent on his right side. These superstitions varied from age to age. Apis was worshipped in Memphis.
Perhaps Irene had gone to see old Krates, and while watching his work and chattering to him, had forgotten the flight of time but no, the priest- smith, whom she sought in his workshop, knew nothing of the vanished maiden. He would willingly have helped Klea to seek for his favorite, but the new lock for the tombs of the Apis had to be finished by mid-day, and his swollen feet were painful.
How different the view opened to us by the possibility of soul being apportioned in various measure among the lower animals: there is a clue given "to justify the ways of God to" brutes: we need not then consider, with a certain French abbé, that they are fallen angels, doing penance for their sins; we need not, with old Pythagoras and latter Brahmins, account them stationed lodges, homes of transmigration for the spirits of men in process of being purged from their offences: we need not regard them as Avatars of Vishnu, or incarnations of Apis, visible deities craving the idolatries of India and Egypt.
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