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Authors: Justin Pollard
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carried down the sphinx-lined processional way from Memphis to the great funerary complex at Saqqara, where some of the earliest pharaohs had been buried. Here the line of sphinxes directed the mourners to a temple and catacomb where the dead Apis, now known as the Osiris Apis or Serapis, would be laid to rest—the Serapeum. Today the majority of the site lies buried deep under the sand, something that was already a problem in 24 BC, when Strabo paid a visit:
One finds a temple to Serapis in such a sandy place that the wind heaps up the sand dunes beneath which we saw sphinxes, some half buried, some buried up to the head, from which one can suppose that the way to this temple could not be without danger if one were caught in a sudden wind storm.
Strabo, Geography, book 17, chapter 1
After Strabo the sands seem to have continued to pile up and the complex disappeared from historical view for 1,875 years until, in a scene that could have come from a children’s adventure book, the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette stumbled upon those same sphinxes that Strabo had recorded disappearing beneath the sand:
Did it not seem that Strabo had written this . . . to help us rediscover, after over eighteen centuries, the famous temple dedicated to Serapis? It was impossible to doubt it. This buried sphinx, the companion of fifteen others I had encountered in Alexandria and Cairo, formed with them . . . part of the avenue that led to the Memphis Serapeum.
Auguste Mariette, La Serapeum de Memphis, 1856
The tantalizing line of sphinxes led to one of the most important funerary sites in Egypt, into the presence of animals whom the Egyptians, at least, believed to be gods. Mariette was transfixed by thoughts of what lay beneath his feet:
Undoubtedly many precious fragments, many statues, many unknown texts were hidden beneath the sand upon which I stood . . . and it was thus, on 1 November 1850, during one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen in Egypt, that a group of thirty workmen, working under my orders near that sphinx, were about to cause such total upheaval in the conditions of my stay in Egypt.
Auguste Mariette, La Serapeum de Memphis, 1856
What Mariette found as he dug was that the line of sphinxes led to a sand-filled courtyard in which sat one of the most exquisite Egyptian statues in existence—the Squatting Scribe. Beyond this, behind a rockfall of rubble which he removed with explosives, lay seemingly endless subterranean galleries cut into the living rock beneath Egypt’s oldest pyramids, which had once contained the mortal remains of the Apis bulls. Each one had been buried in a giant sarcophagus, cut from a single piece of granite and weighing sixty to eighty tons. Inside had lain the doubtless bejeweled and gilded bodies of the bulls themselves, though Mariette noted that all the coffin lids had been pushed aside and the remains robbed.
Two millennia before, in the time of the Ptolemies, few would have dared enter the catacombs where Mariette now walked, and none would have disturbed the sleep of the recently deceased Apis. After their lavish, almost pharaonic burial, word would have gone out to the priests that a new Apis had to be found, and the Nile Valley would be scoured in the search for a calf born under just the right circumstances. Herodotus says the priests were looking out for the “calf of a cow which is never afterwards able to have another. The Egyptian belief is that a flash of lightning descends upon the cow from heaven, and this causes her to receive Apis” (Herodotus, The Histories, book 3 [Thaleia], chapter 27).
In practical terms this meant a black calf with a white diamond on its forehead, an eagle on its back, a scarab mark under its tongue, and double the usual number of tail hairs. When such an animal was found, there was rejoicing through the country because the living god had returned to them. The calf’s mother was immediately revered as the Isis Cow,
One finds a temple to Serapis in such a sandy place that the wind heaps up the sand dunes beneath which we saw sphinxes, some half buried, some buried up to the head, from which one can suppose that the way to this temple could not be without danger if one were caught in a sudden wind storm.
Strabo, Geography, book 17, chapter 1
After Strabo the sands seem to have continued to pile up and the complex disappeared from historical view for 1,875 years until, in a scene that could have come from a children’s adventure book, the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette stumbled upon those same sphinxes that Strabo had recorded disappearing beneath the sand:
Did it not seem that Strabo had written this . . . to help us rediscover, after over eighteen centuries, the famous temple dedicated to Serapis? It was impossible to doubt it. This buried sphinx, the companion of fifteen others I had encountered in Alexandria and Cairo, formed with them . . . part of the avenue that led to the Memphis Serapeum.
Auguste Mariette, La Serapeum de Memphis, 1856
The tantalizing line of sphinxes led to one of the most important funerary sites in Egypt, into the presence of animals whom the Egyptians, at least, believed to be gods. Mariette was transfixed by thoughts of what lay beneath his feet:
Undoubtedly many precious fragments, many statues, many unknown texts were hidden beneath the sand upon which I stood . . . and it was thus, on 1 November 1850, during one of the most beautiful sunrises I had ever seen in Egypt, that a group of thirty workmen, working under my orders near that sphinx, were about to cause such total upheaval in the conditions of my stay in Egypt.
Auguste Mariette, La Serapeum de Memphis, 1856
What Mariette found as he dug was that the line of sphinxes led to a sand-filled courtyard in which sat one of the most exquisite Egyptian statues in existence—the Squatting Scribe. Beyond this, behind a rockfall of rubble which he removed with explosives, lay seemingly endless subterranean galleries cut into the living rock beneath Egypt’s oldest pyramids, which had once contained the mortal remains of the Apis bulls. Each one had been buried in a giant sarcophagus, cut from a single piece of granite and weighing sixty to eighty tons. Inside had lain the doubtless bejeweled and gilded bodies of the bulls themselves, though Mariette noted that all the coffin lids had been pushed aside and the remains robbed.
Two millennia before, in the time of the Ptolemies, few would have dared enter the catacombs where Mariette now walked, and none would have disturbed the sleep of the recently deceased Apis. After their lavish, almost pharaonic burial, word would have gone out to the priests that a new Apis had to be found, and the Nile Valley would be scoured in the search for a calf born under just the right circumstances. Herodotus says the priests were looking out for the “calf of a cow which is never afterwards able to have another. The Egyptian belief is that a flash of lightning descends upon the cow from heaven, and this causes her to receive Apis” (Herodotus, The Histories, book 3 [Thaleia], chapter 27).
In practical terms this meant a black calf with a white diamond on its forehead, an eagle on its back, a scarab mark under its tongue, and double the usual number of tail hairs. When such an animal was found, there was rejoicing through the country because the living god had returned to them. The calf’s mother was immediately revered as the Isis Cow,
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