A tour in the bulls’ tombs

by Steven Viney

Saqqara is renowned for being one of Greater Cairo’s most alluring locations for archaeologists and tourists alike. One of the main reasons many prefer this archaeological site to the Giza Pyramids north of it is that it’s home to antiquities that date from the earlier kings of ancient Egypt all the way to the Greco-Roman period — a time span of almost 3,500 years.

Amid the slump in the site’s visitors since last year’s uprising, the Antiquities Ministry officially inaugurated the Serapeum in Saqqara at the end of September, hoping to send out a message to tourists that Egypt is safe again, with new sites to see.

The Serapeum, originally known as the Apis bull tombs, was where ancient civilizations would mummify and bury bulls in vaulted tombs and sarcophagi with jewels, to worship gods such as Osiris, Apis, Ptah and, later, the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, who was a combination of Osiris and Apis. The evolution of the types of gods and worship practices highlighted in the Serapeum’s inscriptions is testament to how much history is contained in the Saqqara antiquities site — and particularly the Serapeum.

This burial site is not newly discovered — it has actually been under restoration for almost three decades. Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim Ali says the Serapeum is the first of many new restoration projects around Egypt intended to entice new tourists.

The Apis tombs at Saqqara Necropolis back on Egypt's tourist map

The salvage operation of the Apis tombs known as the Serapeum is finally completed

by Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 20 Sep 2012

Dozens of journalists, photographers and top officials as well as archaeologists and restorers gathered today at the Saqqara necropolis, almost 25 kilometres far of Giza plateau, to witness the official inauguration of the Serapeum. After almost three decades of debate among engineers, archaeologists and restorers, the well-known Apis tombs at Saqqara necropolis known as the Serapeam have finally been restored. The tombs of Ptahhotep and Mereruka, two Old Kingdom noblemen, were also inaugurated after restoration.

The Serapeum is one of the main tourist attractions in Saqqara, discovered by archaeologist August Mariette in three stages in 1851-1854, during his business trip to Egypt to document and list Coptic manuscripts in monasteries. While waiting for permission from the Patriarch of the Coptic Church, Minister of State for Antiquities (MSA) Mohamed Ibrahim recounted to reporters, Mariette went on an exploratory trip to discover Egypt’s monuments and archaeological sites. During his trip, he found several engravings bearing the name of Osiris Apis and, asked about that name, archaeologists told him that it was the god of Saqqara. Mariette then went to Saqqara, where he discovered the Apis bull tombs and called them the Serapeum, a name used by French historian Strabon referring to Serapis. From 1851 and 1854 Mariette managed to discover the two parts of the Serapeum: the vaults including the tombs of Apis bulls from the 18^th to the 26^th dynasties (still under restoration); and the great Serapeum which has now been restored, consisting of a long corridor lined with 24 Apis bull vaulted tombs with granite sarcophagi.

Ptah the god from Memphis

The preeminent God of the city of Memphis, one of the earliest administrative centers of the unified Egyptian nation, Ptah apparently lent his name to the nation itself, at least in the Greek tongue. The Egyptians called their nation Kemi, or something approximating to this, but the Greek name which we have inherited to refer to this land, Aiguptos, appears to be a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian name for the city of Memphis, He[t]-ka-Ptah, ‘House of the spirit of Ptah’. Due to its position at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, Memphis is described as “the Balance of the Two Lands, in which Upper and Lower Egypt had been weighed” in the conflict between Horus and Seth, representing Lower and Upper Egypt respectively (Lichtheim vol. 1, 53). Ptah, a God of life, intelligence, speech (especially the word of command) and craftsmanship, is depicted as a standing mummiform man, wearing a skullcap and a broad collar with a large tassel at the back and holding a sceptre combining the ankh, djed, and was (uas) symbols. Ptah is mummiform, not because he has funerary associations, but to symbolize his participation in the state of changeless perfection with which mummification is associated. Ptah’s consort is Sekhmet and Nefertum is his son. The Apis bull was regarded as Ptah’s mortal representative and the deified vizier Imhotep came to be regarded as Ptah’s son as well. In addition, some late depictions of Ptah in magical contexts depict him as a beardless dwarf—fully humanoid, unlike Bes—in most cases holding snakes in his hands; in one instance, this image is labelled “Ptah endowed with life,” (Holmberg, 182). This image is apparently also commonly intended to depict the triune fusion deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Ptah is also so frequently allied withTatenen in the fusion deity Ptah-Tatenen that in many cases ‘Tatenen’ seems simply to have become an epithet of Ptah’s, but it is always safer to assume, given Egyptian conservatism with respect to theological formulae, that references to ‘Tatenen’ in texts embed a reference to Tatenen himself.