Serapis

Serapis is a policy. The first Ptolemies needed a god their Greek soldiers and their Egyptian subjects could both attend, and the solution was to take something genuinely Egyptian — Osiris-Apis, the dead bull of Memphis assimilated to the dead king of the underworld — and dress it as a Greek: bearded, enthroned, a grain measure on the head, Cerberus at the feet. It worked far better than manufactured religion usually does. The cult went out with Alexandrian shipping and turned up in Italy, Britain and the Black Sea, and the Serapeum of Alexandria stood until a Christian mob pulled it down in 391.

Domains

• underworld
• healing

Relations

• counterpart of: Apis
• counterpart of: Osiris

Sources

• Reference treatments of Serapis, of Osiris-Apis and of the Alexandrian cult.