Apis

"Apis was the most important and highly regarded bull deity of

ancient Egypt. 

His original name in Egyptian was Api, Hapi, or Hep; Apis is the Greek name. He is not, however, associated with the god Hapi/Hep who was linked to the inundation and is depicted as the god of the river. One of the most important events the bull participated in was the Heb-Sed Festival, held every thirty years of a king's reign in order to rejuvenate him.

 

Worship of the Apis bull is recorded as early as the First Dynasty in ceremonies known as The Running of Apis but veneration of the bull in Egypt precedes this time, and so it is thought that Apis may be the first god of Egypt or, at least, among the first animals associated with divinity and eternity. He was originally a god of fertility, then the herald of the god Ptah but, in time, was considered Ptah incarnate.

 

In the Early Dynastic Period, the ritual known as The Running of Apis was performed to fertilize the earth. The bull is shown in engravings wearing the menat, the necklace/collar sacred to Hathor. Where the bull ran during this ceremony is unclear, but most likely, it was in the temple precinct at Memphis, the capital of Egypt at the time, which would symbolically fertilize all the land.

Each individual deity had their own sphere of influence and power, but Apis represented eternity itself and the harmonious balance of the universe. Other bovine deities such as Bat, Buchis, Hesat, Mnevis, and the Bull of the West, no matter how powerful, would never have the same resonance as the incarnated deity of the Apis bull.

 

The reason for the bull's death was to join it with Osiris and ritually re-enact the cycle of life, death, and resurrection. The bull had represented the living creator Ptah while it lived and became Osiris when it died and was then referred to as the god Osirapis. Osiris was the first king of Egypt, and the first to die and return to life among all sentient beings, and therefore the ritual act of killing the animal which was so closely associated with kingship and the divine merged the monarchy with resurrection.

 

Apis is depicted throughout Egypt's history as a striding bull, usually with a solar disc and uraeus (the sacred serpent which symbolized the king's power) between its horns. In the Late Period of Ancient Egypt he is sometimes depicted as a man with a bull's head, and, in Roman Egypt, this becomes the most popular representation of the god. During the Ptolemaic Period (323-30 BC), which comes between these two, he was represented in anthropomorphic form as a bearded man in robes, much in the fashion of Greek gods like Zeus, under the name Serapis." 

 

Britanica