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Yet at a
later time these men were explained to be representatives, not of
Osiris, but of his enemy Typhon, and the killing of them was
regarded as an act of vengeance inflicted on the enemy of the god.
Similarly, the red oxen sacrificed by the Egyptians were said to be
offered on the ground of their resemblance to Typhon; though it is
more likely that originally they were slain on the ground of their
resemblance to the corn-spirit Osiris. We have seen that the ox is a
common representative of the corn-spirit and is slain as such on the
harvest-field.
Osiris was regularly identified with the bull Apis of Memphis and
the bull Mnevis of Heliopolis. But it is hard to say whether these
bulls were embodiments of him as the corn-spirit, as the red oxen
appear to have been, or whether they were not in origin entirely
distinct deities who came to be fused with Osiris at a later time.
The universality of the worship of these two bulls seems to put them
on a different footing from the ordinary sacred animals whose
worships were purely local.


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