Abstrakt
The burials of the divine Apis bulls, the embodiment of the creator-king-god Ptah in life and the king-god Osiris in death, were among the most important religious festivals of Memphis for centuries, carrying the strong socio-political messages issued by the king himself, the members of the royal family, the various priesthoods, and other members of the ruling élite, as well as alluring the hundreds of pilgrims at least mostly from Lower Egypt to visit the city and take part in funerary processions. Certain breaks with former indigenous traditions occurred with the Roman conquest and especially in later times, but the activities concerning the Memphite divine bulls are attested almost continuously in surviving records until the second half of the second century CE at latest.
However, the burials of the Roman Apis bulls have not yet been discovered, in stark contrast to the burials of the divine Buchis bull in Hermonthis (Thebaid), spanning from Augustus (30 BCE) until Constantius II (340 CE). This paper aims to investigate exact circumstances around the last two known Apis burials under Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius, dated to c. 156 and c. 170 CE respectively, the social status and prosopography of people said to be involved with the organization of burial in and out of Memphis, their attested mutual connections, and social structure those interconnections imply.