Message #134395

[Demiurge]

Patriarch Theophilus, in the reign of Theodosius; and its mutilated trunk, dragged triumphantly through the streets by the mob of rejoicing fanatics, was ultimately buried in the Hippodrome.

Like that of Mithras, the worship of Serapis was widely diffused over the West. A very curious exemplification of this is to be found in Ammianus’ notice that Mederich, king of the Alemanni, had, when detained as a hostage in Gaul, been taught certain Greek Mysteries, and for that reason changed the name of his son Aganerich into Serapion. But Serapis had a natural claim to the adoration of the Gauls, who, as Cæsar tells us, actually boasted of descent from Dis Pater.

The new-corner from Sinope does not seem to have brought his name with him. When Ptolemy consulted his own priesthood upon this important point, Manetho boldly identified the Pontic god with their own Osor-Apis, chiefly on the score of his attribute Cerberus, which he considered the counterpart of the hippopotamus-headed Typhon who attends Oser-Apis in his character of sovereign of the Lower World. This deity is no other than the Bull Apis, who, after death, assumes the figure of Osiris, the regular form of Egyptian apotheosis, and so frequently seen applied to deceased kings. Osor-Apis, as he now becomes, is depicted as a man with the head of a bull, and carrying the ensigns by which we usually recognize Osiris. The god of Alexandria therefore differs in form as widely as in origin from the original patron of Thebes, with whom he has no other affinity than in name, and that rests only on the arbitrary interpretation of the Egyptian priests, so successful in persuading the Greeks that the mythology of the whole world was but a plagiarism from their own.

M. Marlette in 1860 excavated the Theban Serapeum, as it was called in Roman times, with its long avenue of sphinxes; he also discovered the catacombs where the Apis Bulls were deposited after death, and found there no fewer than sixty, two of their mummies yet reposing undisturbed. It is amusing to notice how neatly the Greeks turned the Coptic Osor-Apis into the more euphonious ὁ Σάραπις.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Footnotes
158:* The difference between him and the ancient Theban Serapis (as the Greeks translated his title "Osor-Api"), shall be pointed out farther on.

158:† Who narrates the whole affair at great length--a proof of the influence of the religion in his day--in his History, iv. 84.

159:* The great god of Assyria, Adad, "The One," the oracle-giving Jupiter of Heliopolis, was thus figured in his golden statue as a beardless youth, brandishing aloft a whip, and holding in his left hand the thunder-holt and wheat-ears. The rays crowning his head pointed downwards to signify their influence upon the earth, who stood before him in the figure of Atergatis, the rays in her crown pointing upwards, to express the springing up of her gifts. She was supported, like Cybele, upon the backs of lions.

160:* I cannot help suspecting that this description supplied Basilides with the idea of his celebrated Pantheus, the Abraxas-figure. The head of the bird was the fittest emblem of the air, the serpent, according to Herodotus, was the offspring of earth, the breast of man was the Homeric attribute of Neptune.

161:* The Patriarch of Tiberias, head of the Jewish religion, after the destruction of Jerusalem.

161:† A very favourite representation of Isis upon our talismans shows her reclining upon a conch.

162:* What proves the want of any real authority for the portraits of the Saviour is the filet that the earliest monuments in sculpture or painting, represent him as youthful and beardless.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------