Athena Review Image Archive ^™ 

Apis, a bull deity, was identified as the son of the goddess Hathor, a primary deity in the pantheon of Ancient Egypt. Like Osiris, Apis was considered to have been sacrificed and reborn, and served as an intermediary between humans and powerful deities. In the New Kingdom, starting in in the reign of Amenhotep III, remains of the sacred bulls associated with Apis were buried at Saqqara.  Ramesses II held ceremonial Apis burials in the Serapeum, an underground complex of burial chambers at Saqqara, whose use continued through the Ptolemaic period.

This statue of Apis, found in the Treasury of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, reflects the role of the bull deity both as a protector of the deceased (i.e., as a form of Osiris, ruler of the underworld) and as essentially linked to the pharaoh, as understood in the 18th Dynasty..