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The Serapeum is grand in its vastness, with its long and high galleries and its mighty vaults containing the huge granite sarcophagi of the sacred bulls of Apis; Mera, red and white, welcomes you from an elevated niche benignly; Ptah-hotep, priest of the fifth dynasty, receives you, seated at a table that resembles a rake with long, yellow teeth standing on its handle, and drinking stiffly a cup of wine.
Indeed they did more, for on the first night after our coming they slaughtered a bull marked much as Apis is, and in the morning we found it lying near the gate of the camp, and pinned to its hide with sharp thorns great numbers of the scarabæus beetle still living.
Here, for three days I rested from my journey and was entertained of the priests of the wonderful Temple of Ptah the Creator, and shown the beauties of the great and marvellous city. Also I was led in secret by the High Priest and two others into the holy presence of the God Apis, the Ptah who deigns to dwell among men in the form of a bull.
Hardly had the sun risen on the morning of his birthday when he had betaken himself to the temple of Ptah with a numerous suite before his brother Philometor could set out in order to sacrifice there, to win the good graces of the high-priest of the sanctuary, and to question of the oracle of Apis.
The men were in capital spirits, for at noon today after they had been quartered here for months as guards of the tombs of Apis and of the temples of the Necropolis a commanding officer of the Diadoches had arrived at Memphis, who had ordered them to break up at once, and to withdraw into the capital before nightfall. They were not to be relieved by other mercenaries till the next morning.
This hall opened into another, the vault of which was somewhat higher and supported by two pillars only. Various scenes the mystic bark, the bull Apis bearing the mummy towards the regions of the West, the judgment of the soul and the weighing of the deeds of the dead in the supreme scales, the offerings to the funeral divinities adorned the pillars and the hall.
But he always found time to hunt in the desert, to manage the affairs of state, and to visit the most interesting monuments of past times, and at Memphis especially, the city of the dead, with the Pyramids, the great Sphinx, the Serapeum and the tombs of the Apis. Before quitting the city he and his companions consulted the oracle of the sacred bull.
The black colour presumably is intended to suggest his place of abode, whereas red denotes the scorching fires of hell. The devil was considered as a sort of eternal Salamander. In the New Testament he is described as a fiery fiend. Red was considered by Oriental nations as a diabolical colour. In Egypt red hair and red animals of all kinds were considered infernal. The Apis was also red-coloured.
His feminine counterpart was the goddess SEKHET, and the third member of the triad of which he was the chief was NEFER-TEMU. PTAH-SEKER is the dual god formed by fusing Seker, the Egyptian name of the incarnation of the Apis Bull of Memphis, with Ptah. PTAH-SEKER-AUSAR was a triune god who, in brief, symbolized life, death, and the resurrection.
It would be past two before we could reach our luncheon-tent; and somehow it seemed less desirable to feed after than before that sacred hour, though the custom be sanctioned by royalty. "Another tomb to see before lunch?" groaned Sir John Biddell, when the dragoman firmly insisted on the Apis Mausoleum. "Oh, darn! Need we? What? Where they buried Bulls?
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