102 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and BabyloniaEgyptian, whatever might be his rank and station, could follow
the processions in the temple, could enter its inner chambers,
and gaze upon the incarnated deity, provided only that he had
conformed to the preliminary requirements of the ritual and were
not unclean.^73 The temple was not the exclusive property of a
privileged caste; it was only the foreigner and the unbeliever who
was forbidden to tread its courts. It was open to the Egyptian
populace, and to the populace the sacred animals were the gods
themselves.
We do not know whether the hawk which represented Horus,
and in which the soul of the god tabernacled for a time, was
distinguished from other hawks by special marks. We know,
however, that this was the case with some of the sacred animals.
According to Herodotus (iii. 28), the bull Apis of Memphis was
required to be black, with a white triangle on his forehead, an
eagle on his back, double hairs in his tail, and a beetle on his
tongue; and though the extant figures of the god do not support
the precise description given by the Greek writer, they show that
certain characteristic marks were really required. In this way the
incarnation of the god was separated from other animals of the
same species, upon whom, however, some part of his divinity
was reflected. Since any bull might have become the habitation
of the deity, it was necessary to treat the whole species with
respect.
The bull Apis was an incarnation of Pta%,“the new life of
Pta%,”as he is often called on the votive tablets. We must see
[111] in him accordingly the local fetish of the pre-dynastic Egyptians
who lived in the district where Memphis afterwards arose. In
fact the bull was sacred throughout the whole of this region. In
the neighbouring city of Heliopolis the place of Apis was taken
by another bull, Ur-mer, or Mnevis, as the Greeks miscalled
him. Mnevis was the incarnation of the sun-god, and, like Apis,
(^73) See Wiedemann,Die Religion der alten Aegypten, pp. 108, 109.