The hostility of the Levites to the rule of Jeroboam is easy to understand, as he set up a rival worship of his own at Dan and Bethel, and appointed priests of his own selection. The form assumed by the objects of this worship might very possibly have been adopted by Jeroboam in remembrance of what he had seen in Egypt, and even as a pledge of his alliance with its king. Never, indeed, had the worship of Apis reached so extravagant a pitch as under this dynasty. In the Serapeum, the burial-place of the sacred bulls, are still preserved the tablets which tell of their installation, death, and interment. ‘On such a day of the month and year,’ say the records, ‘this great god was carried to his rest in the beautiful region of the west—at rest with the great gods—with Osiris, and with the gods and goddesses of the west. His glory was sought for in all places of Pi-tomih (Lower Egypt). He was found after some months in the city of Hashed-abtu, after they had searched through all the lakes and islands. He was solemnly introduced into the temple of Ptah, beside his father Ptah.’ The date is carefully given, and the full lifetime of the ‘god.’ The burial of the Apis was on a scale of regal magnificence, and a national mourning of seventy days was observed. The finding of a successor[81] and his installation was celebrated with the wildest exultation, and with national rejoicing. Little room is left for the idea of symbol or sign; the sacred creature is an emanation of the Divine, is a ‘god,’ and as such the object of the grossest and most grotesque idolatry. An indescribable national enthusiasm gathered around the Apis—he was lodged with sumptuous magnificence, the centre of a crowd of devotees and of those who came to learn the secrets of the future.[82] The successive deaths and interments of the Apis bulls, form, in fact, very nearly all the events recorded during the reigns of the eight kings who succeeded the warlike Shishak. Takelath II., the sixth in succession of this dynasty, sent his son Usarkon, who had been appointed high priest of Amen, to Thebes, to examine and to regulate the temple endowments there. The same inscription tells of some celestial portent which excited general attention, and was considered to portend trouble at hand. [Illustration: THE WORSHIP OF APIS. FROM A STATUETTE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]