Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

436 The Bull and the Sun in Egypt

that is seen between the horns of Apis in extant Egyptian repre-
sentations1 as symbolising the sun, not the moon. The matter is
one for Egyptologists to decide.

At Hermonthis, eight miles to the south-west of Thebes, Strabon
records a cult of Apollon and of Zeus, adding : ' Here too an ox is
kept2.' Macrobius, after mentioning Mnevis and Apis as proofs
that in Egypt the sun was represented by a bull, continues : ' At
the town of Hermunthis they worship a bull, which is consecrated
to the sun in the magnificent temple of Apollo. They call it Bacis
(v.I. Bacchis). It is distinguished by certain miraculous signs which
suit its solar character. For it changes its colour every hour, so they
declare ; and the hairs, they say, with which it is covered, grow the
opposite way to those of all other beasts, so that it is regarded as

Fig. 311.

an image of the sun opposing the movement of the universe3.'
E. A. Wallis Budge4 comments as follows : * The Egyptian equiva-
lent of the name Bacis, or Bacchis, is BAKHA,...and this bull is

1 A. Erman A Handbook of Egyptian Religion trans. A. S. Griffith London 1907
p. 23 fig. 31, Roscher Lex. Myth. i. 420 fig., H. Stein on Hdt. 3. 28 fig.

2 Strab. 817.

:i Macrob. Sat. 1. 21. 20 f. {Bacin most MSS. bachin cod. A. Bacchin cod. 'Angl.').
The expression (ib. 21) imago so/is in adversam nmndi partem nitentis is rightly explained
by L. Jan ad loc. with the help of Macrob. comm. in somn. Scip. 18 as an allusion to the
difference between the real and the apparent movement of the heavenly bodies. E. A. Wallis
Budge The Gods of the Egyptians ii. 352 says: 'an image of the sun shining on the other
side of the world, i.e., the Underworld.' But nitentis is the participle oinlti, not nitere.

4 E. A. Wallis Budge op. cit. ii. 352 f. W. Spiegelberg, however, in the Archiv fur
Papyrusforschtmg tmd verzvandte Gebiete 19011. 339 fT. infers from the names Uereflovxiis),
Uafiovxis (II'Pouxis, nt/36xts), H(3oukis, UeToaoppovxis that there was a god BoOx«, and
publishes a mummy-ticket (s. i or ii A.D.), now at Strassburg, which directs that the body
of one Thaesis be sent to Hermonthis and there deposited ds rb Bovxiv ( = Bovxeioy) \
"ifeveovripi. -waarocpopov \ rod deov fwou Bovxw {sic). Hence in Macrob. loc. cit. he cj. Bucin.