The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)Duncker, Max
History
The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)
Duncker, Max
History, Ancient
caused a gallery still larger and more beautiful to be
excavated, and provided with handsome cells. After Darius had extended
this second gallery, the bodies of the bulls were buried in the chambers
of it down to the times of the latest Ptolemies. As yet sixty-four tombs
in all have been discovered; but of these only four were uninjured. All
the rest had been already opened by the Arabs, plundered, and in part
destroyed. The inscriptions on the tombs in the galleries give the same
representation of the Apis as the older sepulchres. He is "the Osiris
again restored to life," the "revived Apis of Ptah," "the living Apis,
which is Osiris abiding in Amenti," the "second Ptah." On a sarcophagus
we read:--"Here is Osiris Apis, who dwells in Amenti, the great God, the
eternal Lord, the ruler for all time." Another inscription remarks "that
he had been sought for three months in the valleys of Upper Egypt, and
on the islands of Lower Egypt. When found he had been brought to his
throne in the temple, to his father Ptah, in such and such a year, on
such and such a day. The happy duration of his life had been
six-and-twenty years; then the deity had been carried to burial, as he
had established himself in the good Amenti in order to unite himself on
his eternal throne with the house of centuries." Or, as it is said in
another inscription, "the holiness of Apis has been brought to unite
himself with the good Amenti."[100]
By this constantly renewed incarnation in the form of a bull, the emblem
of generation, the god of life gave the Egyptians a guarantee for the
continuance of his grace, and the perpetuation of their life in this
world and the next. Whether other forms of incarnation beside this were
ascribed to the god cannot be determined.
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