The Quran

148

وَاتَّخَذَ قَومُ موسىٰ مِن بَعدِهِ مِن حُلِيِّهِم عِجلًا جَسَدًا لَهُ خُوارٌ ۚ أَلَم يَرَوا أَنَّهُ لا يُكَلِّمُهُم وَلا يَهديهِم سَبيلًا ۘ اتَّخَذوهُ وَكانوا ظالِمينَ

Muhammad Asad

AND IN his absence the people of Moses took to worshipping the effigy of a calf [made] of their ornaments, which gave forth a lowing sound.¹ Did they not see that it could neither speak unto them nor guide them in any way? [And yet] they took to worshipping it, for they were evildoers:

The golden calf of the Israelites was obviously a result of centuries-old Egyptian influences. The Egyptians worshipped at Memphis the sacred bull, Apis, which they believed to be an incarnation of the god Ptah. A new Apis was supposed always to be born at the moment when the old one died, while the soul of the latter was believed to pass into Osiris in the Realm of the Dead, to be henceforth worshipped as Osiris-Apis (the "Serapis" of the Greco-Egyptian period). The "lowing sound" (khuwar) which the golden calf emitted was probably produced by wind effects, as was the case with some of the hollow Egyptian temple effigies.