The Bucheum

Abstract

NO animal has had a more consistently honourable place in the life of the Egyptians than the ox. The earliest human settlements contain remains which indicate the domestication of cattle, while the special treatment of skeletons in an associated cemetery suggests some sort of veneration already at this date. Before the historic period, ox-headed amulets have appeared. The famous ceremonial palette of the First King of the First Dynasty depicts the Pharaoh as a bull trampling his enemies underfoot?a conception to be made explicit 1500 years or so later, and maintained thereafter until the end of the Dynasties, by the inclusion of a “Strong Bull“name in the royal protocol. Hathor was not the only cow-goddess, and mythology could show other bulls and cows who did not claim the full status of divinity. To-day the buffalo, though often with a camel for yoke-mate, draws virtually the same plough as is to be seen behind the cattle on the walls of tombs of the Old Kingdom. Small wonder that the three sacred bulls, the animal theophanies of three different and major gods, of the separate worship of which we are certain, are among the most important animal cults known in ancient Egypt.

The Bucheum.

Sir Robert Mond Oliver H. Myers. With Chapters by T. J. C. Baly, D. B. Harden, Dr. J. W. Jackson, G. Mattha and Alan W. Shorter, and the Hieroglyphic Inscriptions edited by H. W. Fairman. (Forty-first Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society.) Vol. 1: The History and Archæology of the Site. Pp. xii + 203. Vol. 2: The Inscriptions. Pp. xii + 92. Vol. 3: The Plates. Pp. iv + 173 plates + iv. (London: Egypt Exploration Society; Oxford University Press, 1934.) 50s. net.