Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/24

12 Museum, Phtha is said, ach pe em hep (e n) ''tet. f'', "to suspend the heaven by the poise of his hand." The same word hep also occurs in the sense of rudder. Hence the name Apis probably signified the adjustment, or discriminating power, of the god Phtha. In his physical relation as an emanation, he is called "the living son of Phtha." Pantheistically, he is combined with Osiris, as Osir-Hepi; then he is a bull-headed man, like the Minotaur. His name also resembles, although it is not identical with, that of the Nile,—in Egyptian, called Hapi; which suggests that he was also considered a personification of the river itself, or rather the inundation,—and that in the dream of Pharaoh, the seven fat kine, alluded to the seven full Niles or years of plenty; the seven lean kine, to seven deficient inundations. The connexion of bull with river is found, indeed, in the Greek mythology throughout its length and breadth; and, in the Assyrian religion, the great predominance of bull-worship seems to show that it personified Assyria itself,—the representative of the Eastern Turan; as its antagonist power, the lion, was the Persian Iran. The last Egyptian analogy which I shall mention, is the genius Hepi, generally cynocephalus-headed, who personified the second of the cardinal points of the Egyptian compass, the north. It is clearly connected with the Coptic hap, " to hide."

According to Chæremon, who was well instructed in the hieroglyphics, and who had charge of the library at Alexandria, or else of that of the Serapeum, in the age of Nero, a bull was used to express "the earth,", evidently from the sound ka, bull, being similar to that of kah, earth. Horus Apollo interprets the bull by "manliness."