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Ἐπάφου: i. e. Apis (cf. c. 153), the holy calf of Memphis, by which the god, Ptah-Socharis-Osiris, was represented on earth. H. gives in iii. 28. 2, 3 (cf. ἄλλῳ λόγῳ, § 2) an account of his origin and marks. It was from the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty that the Apis-cult became especially important; under the Ptolemies, as Serapis, he was the chief god in Egypt. The Greeks identified him with Epaphus, son of Zeus and Io (cf. Aesch. P. V. 850-1); but, apart from Aelian's contradiction (Hist. An. xi. 10), this is obviously mistaken. An account of the Apis is given in Maspero, pp. 37-9. They were buried in the Serapeum at Memphis, rediscovered by Mariette in 1851-2.

Any beast that bore the same marks, e.g. the ‘black hair’ (Plut. I. et O. 31; Mor. p. 363, says ‘white or black’), was holy and could not be sacrificed. So red cattle were properly used as offerings (cf. Numb. xix. 2, the ‘red heifer’); but great freedom was allowed, as the monuments show. H.'s account is confused; he seems to mean that no beast could be sacrificed that had black hairs or that had the marks of an Apis; if it had neither of these sacred features it was marked as θύσιμον.

καθαρόν here = ‘fit to be sacrificed’, but below (§ 3) ‘without the marks of an Apis’.

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