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: ApisHe is the Apis bull after death, assimilated to Osiris. The Egyptian compound Osiris-Apis was already in use at Saqqara before the Ptolemies built a Greek god on top of it.Reference treatment of Serapis's derivation from Osiris-Apis, the dead Apis bull assimilated to Osiris. (secondary)
• counterpart of: OsirisThe other half of the compound.Reference treatment of Serapis and Osiris. (secondary)

Sources

• Serapis is the Graeco-Egyptian god derived from Osiris-Apis and promoted by the early Ptolemies, with Hellenistic iconography, a great sanctuary at Alexandria and a cult that spread across the Mediterranean.: Reference treatments of Serapis, of Osiris-Apis and of the Alexandrian cult. (secondary)