Epaphus

Epaphus was the son of Zeus and Io and a king of Egypt in Greek myth. His name comes from the Greek word for “touch”, because Zeus conceived him by laying a hand on Io after she had wandered the world as a cow. Epaphus founded Memphis, fathered Libya, and through her became an ancestor of Danaus and Cadmus. Herodotus says that the Greeks called the Egyptian bull-god Apis by the name Epaphus.

Birth of Epaphus

Epaphus was the child of Io, a priestess of Hera whom Zeus seduced and, when Hera found out, changed into a white cow by a touch (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.3). In Aeschylus, Prometheus tells the wandering Io that at Canopus, at the edge of the land by the mouth of the Nile, Zeus will restore her senses by touching her with a fearless hand, and that she will bear a dark son, Epaphus, named for this touch, who will reap all the land that the broad Nile waters (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 846–852). In the Suppliants the chorus likewise derives the name from the touch (ephapsis) of Zeus, and Io comes to Canopus and Memphis, where Zeus begets the child with the touch of his hand (Aeschylus, Suppliants 40–48, 311–315). Apollodorus likewise says that Io came to Egypt, regained her original form and bore Epaphus beside the river Nile (Library 2.1.3).

Hera and the Curetes

According to Apollodorus, Hera persuaded the Curetes to make the child disappear. Zeus killed the Curetes, and Io went in search of her son. She wandered through Syria, where she learned that the wife of the king of Byblus was nursing him, and when she had found him she came back to Egypt and married Telegonus, who then ruled the Egyptians (Library 2.1.3).

King of Egypt

When he grew up, Epaphus became king of Egypt. He married Memphis, the daughter of the river Nile, founded a city and named it Memphis after her, and had a daughter, Libya, from whom the land of Libya was named (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4). The poet Aeschylus makes his own Epaphus the ruler of all the land the Nile waters (Prometheus Bound 851–852).

Descendants

Libya bore twin sons to Poseidon, Agenor and Belus. Agenor went to Phoenicia and became the ancestor of a great line (his sons include Cadmus), and Belus stayed in Egypt; his sons Aegyptus and Danaus were the ancestors of the fifty sons and fifty daughters of the Danaid myth (Apollodorus, Library 2.1.4, 3.1.1). In Aeschylus, Prometheus tells Io that in the fifth generation after Epaphus a company of fifty maidens would come back to Argos (Prometheus Bound 853–854), and the Danaids in the Suppliants trace their line to Epaphus (Suppliants 313–319, 584–589).

Epaphus and Apis

Herodotus reports that the Egyptians kept a sacred bull, Apis, which the Greeks call Epaphus: Apis in Greek is Epaphus (Herodotus 2.153). He says that when Apis appeared, the Egyptians dressed in their best clothes and held a festival, and that Apis was a calf born of a cow that could never conceive again, which the Egyptians believed was made pregnant by a light from heaven (Herodotus 3.27–28; compare 2.38).

Epaphus and Phaethon

In Ovid, Epaphus is believed to be the son of Jupiter (Zeus) and shares temples with his mother in the cities of Egypt. He is a young man of the same age as Phaethon, the son of the Sun. When Phaethon boasted of his father, Epaphus, the descendant of Inachus, answered that he was a fool who believed everything his mother said and was puffed up by the image of a false father. Phaethon, stung, took the insult to his mother Clymene and went to ask the Sun for proof (Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.748–759).

Epaphus Sources

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 846–854; Aeschylus, Suppliants 40–48, 311–319, 584–589; Apollodorus, Library 2.1.3–4, 3.1.1; Herodotus 2.38, 2.153, 3.27–28; Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.748–759.

See Also: Zeus, Io, Hera, Libya, Agenor, Belus, Danaus, Phaethon, Poseidon