Soulful Creatures. Edward Bleiberg

forehead, a likeness of vulture wings on his back, double hairs on its tail and a scarab-shaped mark under its tongue,”{9} according to Herodotus (figure 22). Believed to be the replication and manifestation (ba) of Ptah, Apis had his principal sanctuary at the temple of Ptah in Memphis. Apis’s importance to kingship is reflected in its role in the royal renewal ceremony of the Sed-festival, where it conveyed its power to the king. After death, each Apis was embalmed, mourned, and buried in places like the Serapeum of Saqqara, with equipment similar to elite human burials. As the bull sacred to the west, the location of most cemeteries, deceased Apises became associated with Osiris as the god Osiris-Apis (Oserapis), and held the epithet “ba of Osiris.” As a direct manifestation of a god, the crowned Apis bull was believed to provide oracles during life and after death. Apis’s oracular abilities likely affected the economic development of North Saqqara, which became the focus of numerous animal cults in the Late Period.{10}

      Due to the “divine nature of his birth,” the mothers of Apis (figure 23) were deemed manifestations of the goddess Isis and awarded lush burials in the Iseum in North Saqqara, as were Apis calves. A myth from the time of Nectanebo II refers to Thoth as the father of Apis, perhaps explaining why baboons and ibises, closely associated with Thoth, were also buried in the vicinity of the Serapeum.{11}

       The sacred bull of Heliopolis known as Mnevis was identified by its completely black color, which alludes to inundation, pre-creation, and rebirth.{12} Linked with the creator god Atum, and regarded as the ba of the sun god, Mnevis was represented with a sun disk and uraeus between its curved horns. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, the Mnevis bull was second to Apis, and also consulted as an oracle. References to Mnevis bulls date back to the Pyramid Texts, and Mnevis burials are known from the Ramesside period. Mnevises were mummified like humans and received analogous offerings. A boundary stela at Amarna states: “Let a cemetery for the Mnevis bull be made in the eastern mountain of Akhetaten that he may be buried in it.”{13} The mothers of Mnevis bulls enjoyed their own cult as the cow goddess Hesat, and their calves were also entombed in Heliopolis.

      A later addition to bull cults, attested from Ramesses II’s reign, was the Buchis, sacred to the god Montu in Hermopolis (Armant) and closely linked with Amun and Min (figure 24). Each Buchis was likely a wild bull, distinguished by its white body and black head.{14} The Roman writer Macrobius (circa 400 c.e.) described the belief that the Buchis bull changed color every hour and its hair grew backwards. As it was deemed to be the ba of Re and Osiris, the bull’s name means “Who Makes the Ba Dwell within the Body.” The deceased Buchis was mummified and buried in sandstone sarcophagi in catacombs called Bucheum. Mothers of Buchis were subsequently interred at Baqariyyah, in Armant, in the Late and Greco-Roman periods. Other localities also worshipped sacred bulls that are less well documented.{15}

       Ram

      Domesticated in the early Predynastic Period, large herds of sheep were kept for agricultural use and as a source of food. Noted for their aggression and virility, ram deities held epithets like “Coupling Ram that Mounts the Beauties” (figure 25). According to Plutarch, certain taboos against sheep products were in place for priests of ram deities: “because they revere the sheep, abstain from using wool as well as its flesh.” Two types of ram occur in Egyptian art. A ram with short, curved horns (Ovis platyura aegyptiaca), appearing in Egypt around the Twelfth Dynasty, came to be one of the manifestations of the principal Egyptian god, Amun (figures 26 , 27 ), and was particularly revered in this form in Nubian temples. The god Khnum, represented as a ram with long, wavy horns (Ovis longipes palaeoaegypticus, now extinct) or a ram-headed human, was worshipped throughout Upper Egypt with prominent cult centers at Esna and Elephantine. Attested from the earliest periods, Khnum was believed to have created humans, animals, and the universe on a potter’s wheel.

      The similarly represented god Banebdjedet was venerated as the united ba of Re and Osiris from the Second Dynasty on. The pure-white sacred ram of Mendes resided in the temple and offered daily oracular statements on the functioning of the state. The roots of the similar Egyptian words sr (“ram”) and sr (“to foretell”) likely fostered belief in this ram’s clairvoyance. Another ram deity, Heryshef, who may have originally been a fertility god, was worshipped at Herakleopolis Magna as early as the First Dynasty. Sacred rams were mummified and buried in catacombs at these and other cult centers of the later periods as well.

      Dog, Jackal

      As in modern society, already in Neolithic times dogs were used as domestic pets, guardians, herders, and police assistants. Several dog breeds could be found in ancient Egypt, the most popular being the greyhound, basenji, and saluki, all well suited to hunting; an Egyptian vessel from about 4500 b.c.e. in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, shows a hunter with four dogs. Dogs were depicted as pets under their owner’s chair, and some were buried with or next to their owners. Early rulers of Abydos were buried with their dogs, while the Eleventh Dynasty king Wahankh Intef II included names of his dogs on his funerary stela .

      From the First Dynasty, Egyptians venerated several jackal deities. The most prominent of these was Anubis, represented as a canine or a canine-headed human (figure 28). Traditionally, the Anubis animal (sab) has been identified as a jackal, but its generally black coloring, symbolic of the afterlife and rebirth, is not typical of jackals and may instead denote a wild dog. The numerous canine mummies of later periods were buried in the Anubieion catacombs, named after Anubis by later authors. According to myth, Anubis was responsible for embalming the god Osiris, and was venerated throughout Egypt as patron of embalmers. His epithets include “Foremost of the Divine Booth” (that is, the embalming tent or burial chamber) and “He Who Is in the Mummy Wrappings.” Because dogs and jackals roamed the desert’s edge, where the dead were generally buried, they were seen as protectors of cemeteries; alternatively, the use of a canine image in funerary contexts may have reflected a desire to prevent wild canines from disturbing corpses, which they likely did. The so-called seal of Anubis, representing a jackal above nine bound captives, was stamped on tomb entrances in the Valley of the Kings, symbolically protecting the tombs and their occupants. As a funerary deity, Anubis assisted Osiris’s judgment by weighing the heart of the deceased, in the Book of the Dead, Spell 125, while the Pyramid Texts refer to him as the judge of the dead.

       The god Wepwawet was similarly depicted as a jackal-headed human, or a jackal with a gray or white head (figure 29). Wepwawet’s cult was especially prominent in Abydos, where he was one of the earliest deities worshipped. His epithets include “Lord of Abydos” and “Lord of Necropolis.” Wepwawet was also worshipped in Asyut, known to the ancient Greeks as Lycopolis (“wolf-town”). The meaning of Wepwawet’s name, “Opener of the Ways,” primarily refers to his role as protector and guide of the deceased through the Netherworld. As such, he performed the traditional Opening of the Mouth ceremony, revivifying the deceased. Wepwawet was also venerated as a royal messenger and the deity who facilitated royal conquests of foreign lands, by opening the ways for the king.

      Cat, Lion

      Domesticated considerably later than dogs, felines are one of the most iconic species in Egyptian culture. Cat mummies are common in later periods (see figure 109), although lion burials are rarely attested. Two types of smaller cats commonly appeared in ancient Egypt: the jungle cat (Felis chaus) and the African wild cat (Felis silvestris libyca). The latter were kept as pets from the Predynastic Period onward. The house cat’s knack for catching mice and snakes in homes or granaries was highly valued, and was translated into mythology. With their ability to see in darkness and fight off dangerous creatures, various cats regularly appear on Middle Kingdom magical knives and figurines. In the Book of the Dead, the sun god takes the form of a tomcat to defeat the serpent Apep. Tomb scenes of hunting and fowling with the participation of smaller cats symbolically refer to such mythological episodes.

      The domestic context and motherly qualities of cats closely link