The Serapeum of Saqqara (also called the Serapeum of Memphis) is located about twenty kilometers south of Giza, on the necropolis of Saqqara. The site is dedicated to the worship of the sacred bull Apis and the god Osiris-Apis, whom the Greeks renamed Serapis from the reign of the Ptolemies, in 300 BC.
The serapeum, built at the request of Amenhotep III around the year -1370, dates from the 18th dynasty. During his life, the bull was venerated under the name of Apis, considered the reincarnation of Osiris.
When he died, he became Osiris-Apis. At his death, there was a temple at ground level in which the Egyptians performed funeral rites. There was the mummification of the animal, there were rituals and then they went down into the serapeum to put the mummy of the bull in a vat. They closed the vat and then the alcove. In front of it, there was a stele in honor of the bull. The temple above ground was not originally built, but was added around -1235, about 140 years after the creation of the site.
