Serapis - a genetically engineered Hybrid?

Originally posted by AmmonSeth

Originally posted by Harte
Now that's irony for you, as I believe I already indicated that the entire thing was a bunch of bull.

Harte

Whats ironic is that you dont believe in any of it, yet you still regularly check back for news on it,

Actually, anyone that purposefully misses one of Byrd's posts is electing to remain in a state of self-imposed ignorance.

Harte

reply to post by seagrass


Awww your so sweet stars for you too

Returning to the Serapis/hybrids/bull mummies topic:

I've done additional checking (brief) and haven't found any mention of mummies that are of unknown species.

Does anyone have a solid link (showing when the mummy was found and where it was found and by whom and where it ended up) to a mummy of an unknown species? I'd like to check out the references and the museum and so forth (and contact them).

To date, all I see are two kinds of mummies: those that are known species (humans, bulls, cats, etc) which have been mummified (including fraudulent dogs in cat mummy coffins) and coffins containing what's basically garbage.

A hybrid (such as a modern liger (tiger-lion crossbreed)) isn't made up of "part lion bones and part tiger bones." It's one consistant being. Chimeras (two different genetic material beings) are a single species (again, identifiable.)

You can't graft a fox body onto a cat head because of the physical differences in nerves, blood vessels, structure (vertebra won't fit together) and probably the biochemistry (cats need different nutrients than foxes).

So... could someone give this scholar-in-a-hurry a nice link to one of those real "hybrid mummies" so that I can go look it up and verify what it is and where it's residing (and maybe go pester the museum or university about it)? I don't want to do the pestering about known mummies that are eliminated because we know what they are.

Just the "hybrid mummies" associated with Serapis and the Osirieon and so forth.

reply to post by Byrd


I've already tried to explain the biological problem to SkyFloating. Honestly? It seems that people who readily accept alien space nazi time travelers founding all civilizations aren't too accepting of basic biology and genetic theory. Perhaps if I explained it in terms of the hollow earth and raz-guns for the space cadets...

Skyfloating hasn't posted on ATS since 10/2. I'm sure he will let you know where he got the information when he gets back.

Additional information on the bull burials in the Serapeum of Saqqara:

* there are actually TWO Serapeums -- one is in Alexandria. It's the Serapeum in ALEXANDRIA that is associated with the cult of Serapis and not the one in Saqqara (which has Apis bull burials.)

Easy to get confused. I didn't realize there were two until I did some further hunting.

www.touregypt.net...

Dates of bull burials are given here, as is the name of the person who found them.

Further excavation carried out in 1852 revealed an older gallery known as the "lesser Vaults". They had similar rock hewn chambers that had contained bulls in wooden coffins. They dated from year 30 of Ramesses II reign down to the 22nd Dynasty. The burial of Apis XIV made in the 44th year of Ramesses II reign survived intact.

Throughout 1952, Mariette's work continued resulting in the discovery of a thrid series of smaller bull burials. They ranged in date from Amenophis III of the 18th Dynasty through the 19th dynasty, the earliest burials found. Here, two coffins, that of Apis VII and Apis IX were also discovered intact, along with shabtis, canopic jars and amulets. One of the Apis bulls can be found in the Cairo Agricultural Museum.

So, the information here says that they're all bulls. Several direct names are given (Apis 14th) as are pharaohs and reigns -- so we can go look up the details of those burials and see if anyone thought there was anything unusual about the animal.

There should be pictures -- BUT -- before anyone goes to make any conclusions about bull mummies, you need to look at the difference between live humans and human mummies (at least 3 dozen pictures) and then take a look at bull anatomy (skulls in particular) and have a number of pictures of Egyptian cattle tabbed to check things like skull proportion, chest size, size of calves and yearlings, and so forth.

I'm serious about the "take a hard look at the skeletal anatomy and in particular the skull." If you haven't taken comparative anatomy (I actually did, long ago), you may not know what falls into the bounds of "really odd" and "actually that's just the way it looks."

Auguste Mariette, one of the best known early explorers of Egypt, but sometime of dubious fame in light of some of his methods, was ordered to precede the prince's visit and dig for antiquities. He was then to rebury his finds along the path of the prince's intended itinerary.

Mariette was placed in charge of Egyptian antiquities by Said Pasha on June 1st, 1958. Regrettably, his excavations were often carried out with no supervision at all, and there was not a system in place to assure any quality in his work. Tragically, even the records that he did keep were destroyed when his house at Bulaq was flooded in 1878. His goals seemed to be adding items to the national museum at a dizzying pace, which he accomplished at the cost of considerable knowledge. Even the "salting" technique intended for the French prince was repeated in 1868-69 for the visit of Edward, Prince of Wales, who was to "discover" a group of 30 coffins in the tomb of Amenkha at Thebes.

Dubious indeed. As it seems it continues to be. source

[edit on 7-10-2008 by seagrass]link

"And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." - Exodus 32:3,4

[edit on 7-10-2008 by seagrass]

I found this for you Byrd.The Apis Bull connections
and added for interest...Spanish bullfighting may have originated from Mithraism

It is worth pointing out that many of the oldest bullrings in Spain are actually located on or adjacent to the sites of temples to Mithras.

link

[edit on 7-10-2008 by seagrass]

Google books; The Apis Embalming Ritual.source

Originally posted by seagrass
I found this for you Byrd.The Apis Bull connections
and added for interest...Spanish bullfighting may have originated from Mithraism

It is worth pointing out that many of the oldest bullrings in Spain are actually located on or adjacent to the sites of temples to Mithras.

link

[edit on 7-10-2008 by seagrass]

Impressive and excellent source document -- thank you, Seagrass! I did go a-googling for the individual bulls and found that at least two bull mummies (complete burials) have been found there, matching what's on the list. So that can be used as a handy reference check.

However, that means that this statement

Since no actual bull corpses have been found at this (sic) side, Egyptologists assume that yet undug areas (which Mariette deemed to dangerous to excavate holds the remains of the mythological bull (or, as I believe, hybrid-being). (www.abovetopsecret.com...)

is apparently not up-to-date on what's actually been found there.

There are a few other points to look into... such as the documentation of the human mummy in there, and the bulls of Abuser (the name is apparently wrong, because there's no "abuser" and no "abu ser" that I can find. However, I have to run to an appointment and have no time to dig further.)

reply to post by NeverSurrender


agreed, it almost tempts me to go into Egyptology though...at least some form of history, what you can learn from all of this history is mindboggling as well

reply to post by Byrd



Hello Byrd...the name is spelled Abusir with "i". Sorry for the misspell.

Question: Why do you say that apis (bulls) and ser-apis are two separate things? (I didnt understand that part).

When the Greeks took the Apis Bulls and Osiris and merged it with their own gods it became the Serapis.

The Greeks had little respect for animal-headed figures, and so a Greek-style anthromorphic statue was chosen as the idol, and proclaimed as the equivalent of the highly popular Apis. It was named Aser-hapi (i.e. Osiris-Apis), which became Serapis, and was said to be Osiris in full, rather than just his Ka (life force).

to form a bridge between the Greek and Egyptian religion in a new age in which their respective gods were bought face to face with each other, so that both Egyptians and Greeks could find union in a specific supreme entity.

Linguistically, the god's name is a fusion of Osiris and the bull Apis,

Siris-apis =Serapis

[edit on 15-10-2008 by seagrass]

This is an interesting doc on the Serapeum, and other animal burial sites including baboons of Thoth and lions and snakes and other deities. google books

I was watching a show the other night on the "flying chariot" of the Serapeum in Alexandria. There was believed to be a smaller library housed in it as well. I thought this was interesting but a little off topic. Here is a pic of the proposed new Library in Alexandria. Shaped like a sun disc.
edited to add link

[edit on 31-10-2008 by seagrass]

Is it possible that the cult of Mithras was a reformulation of the Egyptian cult of the Apis Bull? We know that from the 3rd century BC onwards, the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt instructed the Egyptians to make their religion both accessible and understandable to the other (mainly Greek and Jewish) cultures. The Corpus Hermeticum is thus seen as a Hellenised rendition of the Egyptian wisdom of Thoth. But the ancient Egyptians had more than one cult; was the Apis Cult recodified into the Mithras cult? It is an intriguing suggestion, which no-one seems to have seriously posed!

another great read on Mithraism and Astronomy. link

Originally posted by Skyfloating
reply to post by Byrd

 

Hello Byrd...the name is spelled Abusir with "i". Sorry for the misspell.

Question: Why do you say that apis (bulls) and ser-apis are two separate things? (I didnt understand that part).

I eventually figured out the spelling -- figured it was a typo, there.

The Apis bulls and Serapis are described as two very different things by all the sources. Apis bulls are bulls that conformed to a certain coloring. They're the oldest, by a thousand years or more.

The first mention of Serapis comes with the very deliberate attempt to coin a new religion in Egypt. It comes fairly late in Egyptian history, and because they were promoting it.

Wikipedia says the first mention of Serapis is in association with the death of Alexander the Great. There's a drawing of Serapis there as well. It's an interesting article and the links look pretty good.
en.wikipedia.org...

Don't see any reference to physical blending, though. Given that the cult starts fairly late (300 BC or later), and that people of this age loved hero tales, it seems fair enough that if someone was making human-animal hybrids that there would be a lot of physical evidence as well as writings about them with some pretty solid descriptions and a lot of drawings (just in the way that we know what Alexander's lover looked like and what Caesar looked like and how he acted. Lots of desire for pictures of the very famous, y'know?)

I have to ask this question. Why in the Sumerian Babylonian culture would their religion (did they have a religion?) and gods be hybrids? Why in Egyptian culture did they use hybrids to depict their gods? What is the significance? Why would we as "superior" humans want our gods to be half animal? We today believe animals are the "lessor" on the chain. (Not myself however). Many other cultures also worship the animals, was it because we depended on them for our survival? Or do they actually have some sort of "Ka" type energy? What makes them sacred?

Byrd can you explain to me the dating of the Mithraic cults in the link I posted. Sounds like it could be very old if based on the astrological alignments he mentions. Are they older than Apis in that situation? I have a hard time with timelines.

this would mean that the cult originated in ca. 2000 BC, even though there is no record of it until the 2nd century BC. It is more than likely older than the 2nd century BC, but by almost another two millennia? That seems unlikely. Furthermore, if it did originate in 2000 BC, it seems that the most logical – though therefore not necessary the correct – location would be Crete, which at the time had an obsession with caves and bulls. But then our ancient authors would be wrong…

This confuses me as to which culture is the first to worship in caves with the bull.

[edit on 1-11-2008 by seagrass]

Originally posted by seagrass
I have to ask this question. Why in the Sumerian Babylonian culture would their religion (did they have a religion?) and gods be hybrids?

They definitely had a religion, and there's lots of prayers and tales about the gods. They didn't just show up and say "hey... we'll have gods"; their religion developed over time and by merging gods of many cities over time into a large group of gods (just as happened elsewhere around the world.)
www.crystalinks.com...

en.wikipedia.org...(mythology)

en.wikipedia.org...

The gods weren't hybrids as a rule, but human looking. Some of the things identified as gods (human-snake type images) actually have not been identified (it could be a charm (the Japanese have the "good luck cat" and there are many thousands of them... but they don't worship the cat as a god)). Scholars are reluctant to make statements about things until they have proof in context of what they are.

Some of the gods had several forms (and the form changed depending on where the god was shown and what time period it comes from). Check for specific gods and then look at the history of where they came from and how they developed.

Why in Egyptian culture did they use hybrids to depict their gods? What is the significance?

We don't have them around to ask, so we can't say. There's no "we made Hathor as a cow because..." text out there -- she simply appears as a cow.

All the "hybrid" forms have fully human forms as well and some (Bast, Hathor, others) have fully animal forms in addition to a fully human form... and an animal-headed form.

We don't know why this is -- they didn't leave any records saying "Bast showed up and said she's not a cat but actually a half-cat/half-human deity" or explain why the change in Bast's image occured.

Why would we as "superior" humans want our gods to be half animal? We today believe animals are the "lessor" on the chain. (Not myself however). Many other cultures also worship the animals, was it because we depended on them for our survival? Or do they actually have some sort of "Ka" type energy? What makes them sacred?

The answer here is pretty complex -- and you have to understand that our modern views are shaped by our ability to read, the wide availability of information, and the ability to discuss things with many people who are also able to read well and have access to a lot of information.

So... in brief... animals can be:
* symbols of an attribute that humans want ("animal power" such as "taking on the aspect of a bear to go berserking.")
* a spirit that one aligns with to do something ("becoming the deer to hunt the deer." sort of thing)
* an advisor who comes to you (in the TRUE Native American culture, a totem appears to you and gives you advice (talks to you and shows you ceremonies or practices (called "medicine"))... you don't pick it.)
* a demigod (the divine wolf who nursed a god)
* a transformation of a god
* a part of another god's power (Bast is the "right eye of Ra" and "Bringer of justice" (in the sense that cats hunt vermin, Bast hunts evil and brings justice))
* a source of knowledge and way of relating to the world (the "weres" -- there are people who "have an animal persona" -- practice this kind of transformation)
* a legendary ancestor (and worshipped as such in an ancestor-worshipping culture. In Hawaii, the shark is said to be the ancestor of some of the people)

...and more.

It's complicated. To assign a reason (without interviewing the people with this belief or without reading in their own words what their concept is) is not things that a scholar would do. We want to know why...but so many times when we make a "guess" on these things, we find evidence that shows us the guess was a pretty bad one.