Serapis

Serapis (also spelled Sarapis) was a god of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt whose worship was organized at Alexandria under the early Ptolemaic kings. His name comes from the Egyptian Osiris-Apis, a form of Osiris linked with the sacred Apis bull of Memphis. The Ptolemies presented him in a Greek image, as a bearded, Zeus-like figure. He was honored as a lord of the underworld, a healer, a giver of fertility and abundance, a protector of sailors, and a source of oracles and healing dreams. Together with Isis, he became one of the most widely worshiped deities of the Mediterranean world in New Testament times. He is never named in the Bible, but his cult was part of the religious setting of early Judaism and Christianity. His great temple at Alexandria was destroyed in AD 391.

Name and origins

The Egyptian background of Serapis lies in the cult of the Apis bull at Memphis, the ancient capital of Lower Egypt. Egyptians regarded the living Apis bull as a manifestation of the creator god Ptah. When an Apis bull died, it was mummified and buried with great ceremony, and in death it was joined to Osiris, the god of the dead. The deceased bull was called Wsir-Ḥp, "Osiris-Apis," which Greek speakers rendered Osorapis and then Sarapis. The form "Serapis" became common later, especially in Latin.

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his general Ptolemy took control of Egypt. He governed first as satrap and from about 305 BC as king (Ptolemy I Soter), ruling until 285 BC. Ancient writers credit him with establishing the cult of Serapis in its Greek form at Alexandria, his new capital. Plutarch and the Roman historian Tacitus preserve a story that Ptolemy saw the god in a dream and then had a statue brought to Alexandria from Sinope on the Black Sea. The same writers say that the Egyptian priest Manetho and the Greek religious expert Timotheus advised the king. The story was meant to give the cult an impressive origin and is not a reliable account of how it began. What is clear is that the Ptolemies took an Egyptian god already worshiped at Memphis and gave him a form that Greeks could readily accept.

The purpose of the new cult is debated. Many historians have suggested that Ptolemy wanted a god whom Greek settlers and native Egyptians could worship together and so be bound into a single kingdom. If that was the aim, it was only partly reached. Greeks across the Mediterranean took up the cult with enthusiasm, but most Egyptians went on thinking of the god simply as a form of Osiris. Others argue that the cult served mainly the Greek population of Alexandria and was never really aimed at Egyptians.

Image and character

Serapis was usually shown as a mature, bearded man with thick curling hair, seated on a throne in the manner of Zeus. On his head he wore a kalathos or modius, a basket or grain measure that pointed to the fruitfulness of the land. Beside him often sat Cerberus, the three-headed dog of Greek myth who guarded the underworld. Ancient tradition attributed the famous cult statue at Alexandria to the Greek sculptor Bryaxis, though this is uncertain. Copies and adaptations of the type have been found throughout the Roman world.

The god's character drew on several Greek deities as well as on Osiris:

As ruler of the dead, he resembled Hades or Pluto.
As king of the gods, he was compared with Zeus, and inscriptions sometimes honor "Zeus Helios Great Serapis," joining him to the sun god as well.
As a healer, he was likened to Asclepius. The sick came to his temples hoping for cures, sometimes sleeping in the sanctuary to receive a healing dream.
As a savior (sōtēr, σωτήρ), he was believed to rescue people from danger, especially at sea. This made him popular among sailors and merchants, including the crews of the grain ships that sailed from Alexandria to Italy.

In worship Serapis was closely linked with Isis, who was treated as his consort, and with their child Harpocrates, a Greek form of the Egyptian Horus. The three were often honored together.

Temples and spread of the cult

The chief sanctuary, the Serapeum of Alexandria, stood on a rise in the southwestern part of the city. Excavations there have recovered foundation plaques of Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–222 BC), which shows that the great temple complex was built, or at least rebuilt, under him. The Serapeum also housed a collection of books that served as a branch of the famous Library of Alexandria. A tall granite column, popularly called "Pompey's Pillar" but in fact set up in honor of the emperor Diocletian about AD 297, still marks the site.

A second Serapeum lay at Saqqara near Memphis, where the Apis bulls were buried in great underground galleries. The French archaeologist Auguste Mariette uncovered these galleries in the 1850s, finding massive stone sarcophagi and many inscriptions left by worshipers.

From Egypt the worship of Serapis and Isis spread through the eastern Mediterranean during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, carried by traders, soldiers, and officials. Sanctuaries of the Egyptian gods are known on Delos, in Asia Minor, and in many Greek cities. The second-century traveler Pausanias mentions sanctuaries of Isis and Serapis at Corinth. The cult reached Italy as well. Roman authorities at first tried to suppress it, but it later gained imperial favor. Tacitus and Suetonius report that Vespasian, visiting Alexandria in AD 69–70, was credited with healing miracles connected with the god. Later emperors, notably Caracalla, showed Serapis special honor.

Relation to the biblical world

Serapis does not appear in the Bible, and the Apis bull is not clearly named in the Hebrew text. The Septuagint, however, reads Jeremiah 46:15 as a taunt against Apis, "Why has Apis fled?", and the NIV gives this as an alternative reading in a note. Some interpreters have also seen Egyptian bull worship in the background of the golden calf (Exod 32), though this link is uncertain.

The cult of Serapis formed part of the setting in which the later books of the Old Testament were received and the New Testament was written. The Ptolemies controlled Judea from about 301 to 198 BC, the period behind the struggles between the "king of the South" and the "king of the North" in Daniel 11. Alexandria held a large Jewish community, which produced the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. These Jews lived alongside the official worship of Serapis, and Jewish writers in Egypt often criticized Egyptian animal worship and the worship of images.

In the first century AD, devotion to Serapis and Isis was among the most popular forms of religion in the cities where the gospel was first preached. Such cults offered personal devotion, initiation rites in the case of Isis, and hope of divine help in this life and the next. Early in the 20th century, scholars of the history-of-religions school argued that Christianity borrowed ideas from these and other mystery religions. Later study has generally found the parallels to be loose and the claimed borrowing poorly supported, since much of the evidence for the cults' rites is later than the New Testament. The apostles' message differed sharply from them: it centered on the death and bodily resurrection of a historical person, Jesus Christ, and called for turning from idols to serve the living God (1 Thess 1:9).

Acts 28:11 offers a glimpse of this world. Paul sailed from Malta to Italy on an Alexandrian ship whose figurehead showed "the twin gods Castor and Pollux," another pair of patrons widely invoked by seafarers. Ships of the Alexandrian grain fleet regularly sailed under the protection of such gods, Serapis among them.

Decline and end of the cult

Worship of Serapis lasted into the late Roman Empire. Under the emperor Theodosius I, the government moved against pagan sanctuaries. In AD 391, after conflict in Alexandria between pagans and Christians, the Serapeum was destroyed with the support of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria. The church historians Rufinus and Socrates Scholasticus describe the event, including the breaking of the great cult statue. Its fall was widely seen as the end of paganism's most famous stronghold in Egypt, and the public cult of Serapis soon disappeared.

For further study

Ferguson, Everett. Backgrounds of Early Christianity. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.
Fraser, P. M. Ptolemaic Alexandria. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
Klauck, Hans-Josef. The Religious Context of Early Christianity: A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000.
Witt, R. E. Isis in the Graeco-Roman World. London: Thames and Hudson, 1971.