Editing Apis (deity) (section)

==History of worship==
Worship of an Apis bull, experienced by ancient Egyptians as holy, has been known since the [[First Dynasty of Egypt|First Dynasty]] in [[Memphis, Egypt|Memphis]], while worship of the Apis as a proper god, at least according to [[Manetho]]'s ''Aegyptiaca'', seems to be a later adoption, purportedly started during the reign of king ''Kaiechos'' (possibly [[Nebra (Pharaoh)|Nebra]]) of the [[Second Dynasty of Egypt|Second Dynasty]].<ref>{{cite book|author-link1=Jochem Kahl|last=Kahl|first=Jochem|title="Ra is My Lord": Searching for the Rise of the Sun God at the Dawn of Egyptian History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tTzrbPfbGugC&pg=PA59|year=2007|publisher=Otto Harrassowitz Verlag|isbn=978-3-447-05540-6|page=59}}</ref>

Apis is named on very early monuments, but little is known of the divine animal before the [[New Kingdom of Egypt|New Kingdom]].<ref name="EB1911"/> Ceremonial burials of bulls indicate that ritual sacrifice was part of the worship of the early cow deities, Hathor and [[Bat (goddess)|Bat]], and a bull might represent her offspring, a king who became a deity after death.{{Citation needed|date=September 2017}} He was entitled "the renewal of the life" of the Memphite deity [[Ptah]]: but after death, he became Osorapis, i.e. the Osiris Apis, just as dead humans were assimilated to Osiris, the ruler of the underworld. This Osorapis was identified with [[Serapis]] of the late [[Hellenistic period]] and may well be identical with him. Creating parallels to their own religious beliefs, [[ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] writers identified Apis as an incarnation of Osiris, ignoring the connection with Ptah.<ref name="EB1911"/>

Apis was the most popular of three great bull cults of ancient Egypt, the others being the cults of [[Mnevis]] and [[Buchis]]. All are related to the worship of Hathor or Bat, similar primary goddesses separated by region until unification that eventually merged as Hathor. The worship of Apis was continued by the Greeks and after them by the Romans, and lasted until almost 400 CE.