Serapeum of Saqqara Serapeum of Saqqara The Serapeum of Saqqara is a serapeum located north west of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, a necropolis near Memphis in Lower Egypt. It was a burial place of Apis bulls, sacred bulls that were incarnations of the ancient Egyptian deity Ptah. It was believed that the bulls became immortal after death as "Osiris Apis", a name that appears in Coptic as , "Userhapi", which was borrowed in Greek as , "Serapis", in the Hellenistic period. The most ancient burials found at this site date back to the reign of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of
Noin-Ula burial site on a piece of wood ('ke-mu'), and they also mention a "Hu script". At Noin-Ula and other Xiongnu burial sites in Mongolia and the region north of Lake Baikal, among the objects were discovered over 20 carved characters. Most of these characters are either identical or very similar to letters of the Old Turkic alphabet of the Early Middle Ages found on the Eurasian steppes. From this, some specialists conclude that the Xiongnu used a script similar to the ancient "Eurasian runiform", and that this alphabet was a basis for later Turkic writing. The Noin-Ula burials were intensively studied, but