Serapeum of Saqqara is far more likely that some burials of sacred bulls are waiting to be discovered and excavated. 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
Christian burial home, the body would be defleshed by boiling or some such other method, and his bones transported back to his estate for burial. In response, in the year 1300, Pope Boniface VIII promulgated a law which excommunicated "ipso facto" anyone who disembowelled bodies of the dead or boiled them to separate the flesh from the bones, for the purpose of transportation for burial in their native land. He further decreed that bodies which had been so treated were to be denied Christian burial. The custom of watching by the dead (the wake) is an ancient practice probably derived from the