Transcription
[Music] An animal is offered up. Thou receive a garment of finest linen from the hands of the Ministry of Ra. Eat the bread upon the cloth with the goddess herself had prepared. Drink the wine from the cup with Ra has prepared. Whoever does this in my name shall be reborn.
[Music] The dynastic cult of the Ptolemies, instituted by Ptolemy the First, who was a best friend, figure, and general of Alexander the Great, as a Greek hierarchy with worshipers drawn from Greek-speaking populations, but also borrowing from Pharaonic cults of Egypt, of Isis, Osiris, and Ammon. Hermetic tradition, the official cult established by the Second Ptolemy Philadelphos, interestingly included an assumption into heaven. Theocratists and Callimachus, both court poets, both whose works have passed down to us, treat this theme with apparent seriousness, imitated by the Seleucids in Syria, as we know from an edict of Antiochus the Third, dated from 205, establishing a priesthood for his wife Laodicea, quite distinct from the external municipal honors paid to the royal house. The Adelaides, though cultivated in this manner by various Greek cities and indeed by their own ministers, offered a cult and most flattering eulogy to Attalus's wife Apollonis on her removal to the gods, instituted an official royal cult themselves. Till after 188, even then, deification remains strictly posthumous. Attalus the Third came close to being worshipped in his own lifetime, but got no farther. After military, this emerges with some clarity and curious of efforts of the first two Ptolemies and the Seleucids to establish syncretic anthropomorphic Greco-Egyptian deities who could serve the needs of the polygons, non-Egyptian ruling community of Alexandria, Memphis, Ptolemais, and other administrative and commercial centers of the country, also Asia Minor and parts of Hellas, where Ptolemy had a lot of support as well. Our evidence, especially with Ptolemy the First, is sketchy, but as you will see later, Posinaeus tells us the widespread Egyptian cults all over central Greece make it clear how widespread these ideas became. Serapis, one among many deities, both Greek and local, received royal support during this period. Tradition inherited from Alexander himself, who propitiated a variety of deities wherever he went, according to the Greek Alexander Romance, he spoke with Serapis. Now, obviously, this is written afterwards, but the people of the 2nd century BC, 1st century BC, and even 1st century AD clearly wanted to tie this god to Alexander himself, who was the son of Amon, the god of gods, the Jupiter-Saturn god, the god of what we basically are trying to create with Serapis himself.
But the case of Serapis does not seem to have unique features. The metamorphosis and promotion of this deity as a prop of the royal cult were carried out by Greek intellectuals of Alexandria. Demetrius the Savior gave the god a splendid early boost in his pyeons by claiming a miracle: the god had restored his failing eyesight, also echoed later on with Vespasian. Miracles multiplied, as in other healing shrines, such as Epidauros. The process known as sleeping in, something we see with the cult of Asclepius for the sick, they would sleep in the temple overnight to be healed. This is a practice that would happen in Egypt for Serapis also, pointing out his Asclepius-like qualities. Strabo gives a vivid picture of the Serapeum at Canopus on the Nile with its very distinguished patients and the nightly crowd of revelers abroad the riverboats. Helena's Egyptian priest Moneto was on hand to offer local technical advice, but it was the Greek court sculptor Braxus who designed the huge seated cult figure, bearded and benign, half Zeus, half Pluto, crowned with the grain modius, symbolic of fertility, often seen in the cult of Eleusis, where we see Demeter and Dionysus wearing similar modii, signifying grain and vine. The mysteries of fertility, of agriculture, of death and rebirth, and the fact that he's Pluto and Zeus gives him underworld and heaven rule. He much resembled Zeus, in whom he became to be synchronized in the Roman period, giving rise to the popular slogan: "There is but one Zeus." Serapis. Onto this composite figure, there were also grafted the healing attributes of Asclepius, and later Helios, the sun placed behind his head, as Isis would get the moon placed behind her head, father and mother, sun and moon, and the underworld connection from being Osiris as well as Pluto, though with Greek Cerberus rather than Egyptian Anubis seated at his feet. The intention may have been to appeal to Egyptians as well as Greeks, but we can also detect in this heavily synchronized deity a growing trend toward monotheism, a general assimilation of local or specialized cults. Like that, the Stoic world soul was a natural product, boy, and would reach its local climate under the early Roman Empire.
Serapis was also, reasonably enough, as a creation of the establishment, very soon accorded special respect by Ptolemaic bureaucrats as a god who could, if properly appropriated, boost their official reputations or give them a leg up in the promotional ladder. One letter to Ptolemy the Second's financial minister, Apollonius, reminds him pointedly that Serapis could still further improve even his already exalted position in the king's eyes. The implications of this patronage for the nexus between monarch, priesthood, and civil service are fascinating. Soldiers, of course, another powerful lobby in Ptolemaic Egypt, would particularly appreciate the god's supposed ability to cure wounds and offer protection in battle. It was Ptolemy the Second's officers, civil servants for the most part, who introduced the cult of Serapis to Greece and the Aegean, and indeed throughout the Achaemenid. Would have to make a clear distinction between the public official established creed, inevitably a political phenomenon, which tended to fall off in the third century abroad after Ptolemaic loss of naval hegemony and at home with the native resurgence that followed. Rafia and considerable popularity enjoyed by the oldest, oddest, ancient deities from his launching in Alexandria until his final eclipse and partial absorption by Christianity. But hold that thought about Christianity. A cynic might argue that a god who promised his devotees both physical health and material riches could hardly go wrong with Hellenistic devotees, so long as he made good on even a small percentage of his promises. But there was more to it than this. Serapis answered prayers, gave dreams and visions, answered the need for intimate contact with divinity, a personal god, more than just an autonomous sovereign lore of other gods. He came in your room at night and visited you in your dreams and told you to your face what was needed. Children in all walks of life named Seraphion after the god. Chance has preserved a late third-century eratology of Serapis from Delos, which offers a glimpse of a family priesthood there, and building of a shrine, prosecution of the priest by a group of xenophobic Delians on the excuse that he had failed to obtain a building permit, and his acquittal and triumph thanks to the arete of the god, who regularly gave his acolyte instructions during nocturnal visitations. In Alexandria itself, on the other hand, the Serapis cult was rather slow to catch on outside official circles, and when it did, this was due in great part to the accident of its association with the cult of Isis. Well addressed as thou of countless names, the goddess who indeed became all things to all men, slaves included. Isis, the Egyptian belief, the wife of Osiris and the mother, via his resurrected body, of Horus. Now Hellenized Hippocrates was now refurbished as Serapis' official spouse, in which she enjoyed an even greater and more widespread success. She offered salvation for the wicked, for the people who repent, and there was also a baptism involved. By looking at the text from Apuleius, The Golden Ass, and it was a faith-based salvation as well. The balance and the new syncretic Isis between Greek and Egyptian elements is complex and perhaps ultimately impossible to determine, though her more Promethean qualities associated with the discovery of whole range of inventions from writing to husbandry, essential for civilized life, have decidedly sophisticated flavor, and her mysteries similarly suggest Eleusis rather than Memphis. And Romans did not hide this at all. The shrines and dev of Demeter sometimes would just say Demeter-Isis, or even sometimes Persephone-Isis, and basically it was public knowledge that Demeter was Isis, Isis was the goddess of the mysteries. The Isis cult began to spread throughout the Mediterranean world as early as the fourth century, largely carried by Egyptian sailors. The establishment of the temple of Isis in Piraeus, the cult acquired dynastic currency, as it were, among Egyptian Greeks through its adoption by Arsinoë the Second as part of the joint Serapis-Isis promotion campaign, and because of her own subsequent assimilation after death in 270 to the goddess's persona or avatar. We found dedications made in the name of Isis or Arsinoë Philadelphus and sacrificial vases inscribed with the same title for the use of Alexandrian ladies who hoped for a share of her beauty, intelligence, and success. Ptolemy the Third, Isis and Serapis were included together with the deified rulers and royal oath by the Greco-Roman period. Isis had become the most influential and emotionally potent deity known to the ancient world. Statues, shrines of every sort associated with her worship have been found throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Empire. Isis came to assimilate not only in a wide assortment of goddesses, most notably Demeter, but also quite extraordinary range of functions, as is apparent from her surviving eratologies. She is queen of every land, the goddess among women, she's Demeter, she's Cybele, she's Ishtar, she's Inanna, she's Magna Mater, the goddess among women, giver not only of fruitfulness but also of literacy, who came down to earth from heaven, traced out the courses of the stars, brought salvation, resurrected Osiris, gave birth to the holy child Horus, taught men the ways of the sea, and thus became the patron and protectress of sailors, revealed the holy ministries. "I am the lady of the thunderbolt. I come and swell the sea. I am in the rays of the sun. I am the sun's attendant in its journey. That which I will, find fulfillment. All things yield before me. I free those in bonds. I am mistress of seafaring. I raise up islands from the depths to the light. I am lady of reigns. I vanquish destiny." These are strong mystical undertones about Isis, as is clear from the famous description of her by Apuleius with her long rippling hair and lunar uriel. She supplied the essential iconography and perhaps also some of the early liturgical material subsequent cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But to begin with, this was a holy unforeseen development. The Hellenization of Isis offers a vivid glimpse into a kind of spiritual black hole. Egypt's Greco-Macedonian elite was suffering from something worse than cultural alienation: materialism, and bred its own to human god-kings, Caesar worship, apotheosis, while the Olympians, anthropomorphic tribal patriarchs that they were, had simply reverted to type and left a void that neither affluence nor astrology could fill.
[Music] During the regular season of the summer winds, to ensure safe voyage back to Rome, there occurred miraculous events manifesting the goodwill of heaven and a certain favor of providence towards him whose eyes were well known to have been wasted away to blindness. On the advice of an oracle by Serapis, whom this superstitious people worship as their chief deity, fell at the physician's feet, demanding with sobs a cure for his blindness and imploring the emperor would deem to moisten his eyes and eyeballs with the spittle from his mouth. Another man with a maimed hand, also inspired by an oracle of Serapis, besought Vespasian to imprint his footmark on it. Vespasian laughed at them and refused, but they insisted. He feared a refutation of gullibility, but was half moved to hope by their petition and the flattery of his courtiers. He eventually told the doctors to form an opinion whether such cases of blindness and deformity could be remedied by human aid. Doctors discussed the question from various angles, saying that in one case the power of sight was not extinct and would return if the impediments were removed. In the other case, the limbs were distorted and could be set right again by the application of an effective remedy. This might be the will of heaven, and the emperor had perhaps been chosen as the divine instrument. The man's blindness was recovered, and he can see again, and the other arm grew back from its deformity. This convinced Vespasian that there were no limits to his destiny. It deepened this Beijing's desire to visit the holy place of Serapis in Egypt. About the fortunes and the empire, he gave orders that no one else would be allowed to enter the temple, and that went in while absorbed in his devotions, he saw behind him an Egyptian noble named Basilides, whom he knew to be lying ill several days' journey from Alexandria. He inquired of the priest whether Basilides had entered the temple that day. He inquired of everyone he met whether he had been seen in the city. He even sent horsemen who discovered that Basilides had been eighty miles away. Vespasian therefore took what he had seen for divine apparition, and from that name Basilides deduced the tenor of the oracle's response.
[Music] The origins of the god Serapis have not yet been canvassed in any Roman authorities. The priests of Egypt give the following account: King Ptolemy the First of the Macedonians, building walls and temples and instituting religious cults for the newly founded city of Alexandria, when there appeared to him in his sleep a young man of striking beauty and superhuman stature, who looked like Asclepius, who advised him to send his most faithful friends to Pontus to fetch his image. This would bring blessings to the kingdom, and its resting place would grow great and famous. The youth then appeared to ascend into heaven in a sheet of flame. Impressed by this miraculous omen, Ptolemy revealed his nocturnal vision to the priests of Egypt, who are used to interpreting such things. As they had but little knowledge of Pontus or foreign matters, he consulted an Athenian named Timotheus, a member of the Eumolpid clan, whom he had brought over to Eleusis to act as priests of their religious rites, and asked him to ask him what a strange cult and what god was meant. Timotheus, a high-ranking initiate of the Eleusinian mysteries, found some people who had traveled to Pontus and learned from a near town called Sinope (same place Diogenes was from) there was a temple which had long been famous in the neighborhood as the seat of Jupiter Dis, or Father Dis, Potter Dis. Indeed, near it, there also stood a female figure who was commonly called Persephone, sometimes Isis. Ptolemy was like most despots, easily terrified at first, but liable when his panic was over to think more of his pleasures than religious duties. The incident was gradually forgotten, and other thoughts occupied his mind until the vision was repeated in a more terrible, impressive form than before, and he was threatened with death and destruction of his kingdom if he failed to fulfill his instructions. He at once gave orders that an embassy should be made ready with presents for King Scydrothemus, who was then reigning at Sinope. He was a Magi. He instructed them to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. They made a successful voyage and received a clear answer from the oracle: they were to go, bring back the image of Apollo's father, but leave behind his sisters. This story is anchoring itself in the mysteries of Delphi, Eleusis, as well as Egypt, but also conflating Father Dis with Jupiter and Pluto. Jupiter Dis is usually conflated with Ouranos, the heaven. Pluto is usually the underworld god, and Jupiter is the sky god. So this is like a father god archetype who looks like Asclepius but has all the traits of the god the father.
On their arrival at Sinope, they laid their king's presents, petition, and instructions before Scydrothemus. He was afraid of the god and yet alarmed by the threats of his subjects who opposed the project. Then again, he often felt tempted by the envoy's presence and promises. Three years passed. Ptolemy's zeal never abated for a moment. He persisted in his petition and kept sending more and more distinguished envoys, more ships, more gold. Then a threatening vision appeared before the king of Sinope, bidding him no longer thwart the gods. This when he still hesitated, he was beset by every kind of disease and disaster. Like Pharaoh, the gods were plainly angry, and every day the burden of the wrath grew greater. He summoned an assembly and laid before the divine commands, his own and Ptolemy's vision. The king found the people unfavorable. They were jealous of Egypt and fearful of their own future. They surged around the temple. The story now grows grander still. The god himself, it says, embarked unaided on one of the ships that lay beached on the shore.
[Music] It doesn't say if he teleported or if the statue literally walked. This is unclear, but it somehow made its way by itself from the location in Sinope to a boat destined to Alexandria, accompanied by a miracle of accomplishing a long sea journey for three days and three nights. The temple worthy of so important a city was then built in the quarter called Rhacotis, on the site of the ancient shrine of Serapis and Isis. This was the most widely accepted account of the god's origin and arrival. Some people maintain that the god was brought from the Syrian town of Seleucia during the reign of Ptolemy. Others again say it was this same Ptolemy, but make the place of origin the famous town of Memphis, once the bulwark of ancient Egypt. Many take the god for Asclepius because of its beard and hair, because he also cures diseases, as well. And others plainly for Osiris, as intended to be. And many, many other Jupiter, because he sits on the throne and holds the thunderbolt, sovereign lord of the world. But the majority of people, either judging by what are clearly attributes of the god, or by ingenious process of conjecture, identify him with Father Dis, Etruscan and European descent. This Father, I mean, it's really the ultimate composite god, the father figure, archetypal god, and this would be the most important, most famous cult of Alexandria going forward. According to Plutarch, on Isis and Osiris, he tells the same story that Tacitus about the Pluto statue being taken out of Sinope by Ptolemy the Savior. Serapis, they say, is no other than Pluto, and Isis is Persephone, as our Comacus of Uboa informs us. He also says that Pluto is no other than Dionysus himself, according to Heraclitus and Plutarch. For Serapis is a common god to all, as they all participate of divine matters. Best understand for the Phrygians say that Heracles, and that Typhon was the son of a Siachis, son of Heracles. No more than we have not to condemn Phylarchus when he writes that Dionysus first brought two bullocks out of India into Egypt, and the name was Apis, and the other was Osiris. But that Serapis is the name of him who orders the universe. And from these sentiments of Phylarchus are foolish and absurd. But theirs are much more to affirm Serapis to be no god at all, but only the name of the chest in which Apis lies. And that there are at Memphis certain great gates of copper called the Gates of Oblivion and Lamentation, which being opened when they bury Apis make a doleful and hideous noise straight from hell, which say that they is that reason that when they hear any sort of copper instrument sounding, we are presently startled and seized by fear. But they judge more discreetly who suppose his name to be derived from Sarathia, which signifies to be born again, and so make it mean that the motion of the universe is hurried and born along violently. But the greatest part of the priests do say that Osiris and Apis are both of them but one complex being, while they tell us in their sacred commentaries and sermons that we are to look upon the Apis as the beautiful image of the soul of Osiris. I, for my part, do believe that the name Serapis be Egyptian. It may not be improperly denote joy and merriment, because I find the Egyptians term the festival which we call merry-making in their language Saria. Besides, I find Plato to be of opinion that Pluto is called Hades because he is the son of Abdu, which is modesty, and because he is a gentle god to such as are conversant with him. And among the Egyptians, there are great many other names that are definitions of which they express. So they call the place whither they believe men's souls to go after death Omentus, which signifies in their language the receiver and giver. But whether this be of those names that have been anciently brought over and transported out of Greece into Egypt, we shall consider other time. But the president, we must hasten to dispatch the remaining parts of the opinion handled. Osiris, therefore, and Isis passed from the number of good demons into that of the gods. But the power of Typhon being much obscured and weakened in himself, besides in great dejection of mind and agony, as it were, at the last gasp, they therefore, whilst uses certain sacrifices to comfort and appease his mind, and another while again have certain solemnities wherein they base and confront him by mishhandling and abusing such men as they find to have red hair, and by breaking the neck of an ass down a precipice, as they do to the Tythes, because Typhon was red-haired, and the ass's complexion. Moreover, Pythagoreans look upon Typhon as a demonic power, and they say he has produced an even proportion of numbers, to wit, that of 56. And again, they say the property of the triangle appertains to Pluto, Dionysus, and Mars, of the quadrangle Rhea, Aphrodite, Demeter, and Hestia, and Hera, of the figure of 12 angles to Zeus, and of the figure of 56 angles to Typhon. Uticus relates Plutarch goes on about Typhon for a little bit, and talking about this connection between the red hair and the ass. He says, moreover, the ass suffers for being like him, as hath already spoken of, as much for the stupidity and sensualness of his disposition as for the redness of his color. Wherefore, because of all Persian monarchs, they had the greatest aversion for Ocus, as looking upon him as a villainous and abominable person, they gave him the nickname of the Ass. Upon which he replied, "But this Ash shall dine upon your ox, and he shall be slaughtered." The Apis, and so he slaughtered the Apis, as Dinan relates to us in his history. As for those that tell us that Typhon was seven days flying from battle upon the back of an ass, and having narrowly escaped with his life, afterwards got two sons called Hiroshima or Jerusalem and Judeas, they are manifestly attempting, as shown by the very matter, to rest into this fable relations to the Jews.
[Music] Now, this is mind-blowing because if we actually go back earlier in this treatise by Plutarch, he mentions that the god Amon, who is pretty much the same god as Serapis, he is sort of the father god figure but predates Serapis by about a thousand years. He is related by Plutarch in the following manner:
[Music] He says that Amon, the Egyptian Zeus, Manetho relates that the word Amon is a word that signifies hidden and hiding. But Hecataeus of Abdera saith, the Egyptians use this word when they call any of the gods, not just on one, any of the gods. It is a word of invoking, for that it is a term of calling. Therefore, they must be of the opinion that the first god is the same with the universe, and therefore, while they invoke him who is unmanifest and hidden and pray him to make himself manifest and known to them, they cry. Now, the question is, is this the root word for Amen? They're both words that are used to invoke deity. This makes sense because the Jews and Israel was part of Egypt for about 1500 years, maybe more. Now, even if you look at, for example, some of the oldest archaeology, for example, this is Hezekiah's stone, you notice the Egyptian ankh on the right. Clearly, this is a nation that came out of Egypt, and not in the sense of an exodus, but in the sense of a colony detaching itself and gaining freedom. When I think of Amon and Alexander the Great in the Greek Alexander Romance, it is said that Amon is the father of Alexander. Alexander the Great goes and visits the oracle of Amon in the Siwa Desert of Egypt and is told that today I have begotten you. He is the son of Amon. And for Serapis and for Ptolemy the First to go to great lengths to set up this cult of Serapis that so much resembles Amon as this father god figure who is god of all gods and god of all humans, to me, I think it's pretty obvious this is an attempt to create a one-world universal monotheistic religion with a sort of trinity with Isis, Serapis, and this sun god Harpocrates. As far back as Herodotus in the mid-5th century BCE, people were already identifying Osiris with Dionysus and Isis with Demeter, and the mysteries of Egypt being tied to the mysteries of Eleusis. So, according to Pausanias, nine miles from Tithra, there's a shrine of Asclepius called the First Founder. Almost looks identical to the shrine of Serapis inside the ring wall. The ritual supplies of any of the god slaves have cottages in the middle is the temple and a bearded stone statue over 12 feet high of what looks like Serapis, but was known to these people in Phocis as Asclepius. However, five miles from there is a sanctuary to Isis, and this Isis sanctuary is the holiest ever temple built by Greece for the Egyptian goddess. The Tethrans have a sacred tradition that no one should live there, and no one can go into the holy place except those chosen by Isis and summoned by Serapis in their sleep by visions. The gods of the underworld do the same in the cities of Miletus, sending visionary dreams when they wish a man to enter the holy palaces. This is thought to be the location that Apuleius was in, and The Golden Ass. In his dream of Isis, "I was keen to purify myself, so I bathed myself in the sea waters, plunging my head seven times beneath the waves, for Pythagoras of god-like fame proclaimed that number to be especially officious and sacred rites. Then with my tears I in my eyes, I addressed this prayer to the supremely powerful goddess, queen of heaven. At one time you appear in the guise of Ceres, bountiful and primeval bearer of crops. In your delight at recovering your daughter, you have dispensed with ancient barbaric diet of acorns and schooled us in civilized fare. Now you dwell in the field of Eleusis. At another time you were heavenly Venus, and in giving birth to love, Eros, when the world was first begun, you united the opposing sexes and multiplied the human race by producing ever abundant offspring. Now you are venerated at the wavelet shrine, Pathos. At another time you are Phoebus' sister, by applying soothing remedies, you relieve the pain of childbirth and have brought teeming numbers to birth. Now you are worshipped in the famed shrines of Aphaia, and another time you are Persephone, whose house at night inspired dread, and whose triple form restrains the emergence of ghosts, as you keep the entrance to the earth above firmly barred. You wander through diverse light of yours, diverse groves, and are appeased by varying rites. With this feminine light of yours, you brighten every city and nourish the luxurian seeds with your moist fire, but styling your light intermittently according to their wandering paths of the sun." It sounds a lot like Hymn to Isis, which was repurposed for Jesus. They're synchronizing all these ancient goddesses and saying that you, they all were just Isis the whole time. They thought they were other gods, but really it was Isis. Or really, they thought they were worshipping Osiris, but really it was Jesus. This very sanctuary has disappeared now, but the sense of personal calling by the god is very strong in the cult of Isis at this time. It has been analyzed by Adcock and conversion in 1933. This is the very location of Apuleius's Golden Ass, and which seems to have relation to the cult images of Isis at this tethered sanctuary. They celebrate a festival to Isis twice a year, one in spring, the other in autumn. Two days before each festival, those allowed to enter clean out the holy place in a way not to be spoken about. On the last of the three days of the festival, they hold a fair. Everything sacrifice goes in procession. They say an unsanctified man, with no right to go down to the holy place, once went inside of it with curiosity. As the fire was just beginning to burn, he saw spirits of the dead thronging everywhere. He went home to Tethra, told the story of what he had seen, and then breathed his last. Pausanias says he's also heard something similar from a Phoenician. The Egyptians celebrated a festival for Isis when they say she grieves for Serapis. At the time the Nile begins to freeze, and many people say, "Does the tears of Isis that swell the river and water the plowed land?" However, James Fraser even thinks that when corn grows, this is the erection of Serapis. A Roman who was governor of Egypt bribed a man and sent him into the holy place of Isis at Coptos. The man he sent in did return from the holy place, and he found the same thing happened to him. He described what he had seen: spirits flying out of the holy place, and immediately after he told the story, he died.
One of the major cults of Rome paraded a particularly clear, distinctive identity through its public monuments and rituals. The Sanctuary of Isis and Serapis, one of the arguably maybe even the biggest temple built in Rome under the Augustan era. The Sanctuary of Isis and Serapis on the Campus Martius differed from the normal Greco-Roman temples in its design and decoration, and much of it was not open to non-initiates. This was a mystery cult that you had to have initiation to get into. It seems to have been started by Augustus and Gaius and dedicated in the first century BC, but the sanctuary as we know dates from later first century AD with some later additions and alterations. Saint Peter's Basilica, there is an obelisk that was brought from Augustus which has the words: "Here is the king who will rule the world, whom Amon loves." And this is adjacent to Saint Peter's Square, where Saint Peter was crucified. Two arches formed the entrance to a large courtyard, 70 meters across, within which an obelisk honoring the Emperor Domitian had rebuilt the temple, perhaps a new plan, after its destruction by fire in 80 AD. This courtyard was opened to passers-by, but two sanctuaries opened off of it, accessible only to the narrow doorways and probably not evident to the general public. To the south was a sanctuary of Isis. Here, at the center of a great semicircle, was a colossal statue of the deity, flanked in other niches by statues of Serapis and Anubis. Projecting into the water in the middle of the ops were giant statues in Greek style, Tiber, Nile, and Ocean water gods, symbolizing the position of the cult in the Roman world. To the north was a great courtyard, up to 70 meters across and 100 meters long. Its layout and purpose are not wholly clear, as the Severan Marble Plan largely breaks off at this point. Lines of obelisks or trees, perhaps forming a processional route, and at the far end, probably shrines of Isis and Serapis in the Egyptian style, and Serapis in Greek style. The plan of this northern area was probably modeled on the sanctuary of Serapis at Saqqara in Egypt. Overall, some of the decoration came directly from Egypt, including several sphinxes, and of course, the obelisk that I mentioned before, and portraits of earlier Egyptian rulers, pharaohs and Ptolemies. And also, several of the obelisks were reused centuries later to decorate the Renaissance piazzas of Rome. Other items, including baboons and crocodiles, where imitations of genuine Egyptian products further enhance the Egyptian atmosphere. In addition, the priests of the cult obeyed bizarre regulations of dress and diet: shaved heads, white robes, prohibition on eating pork and fish, and drinking of wine. Elaborate daily rituals took place in these sanctuaries behind closed doors, but outside the sanctuary, individual initiates could be seen performing actions that seem quite weird to some observers, such as leaping into the river Tiber for baptism, and on festival days, grand carnival processions passed through the streets of Rome.
Now we can see pretty clearly through iconography the connection between Isis and influences it has on Mary going forward, and I think the same applies with Serapis and Jesus. And there's actually some information that I think you should know that might not be true. It's from the Historia Augusta, so we should take it with a grain of salt, but there is very well could be true, it just would need some more evidence. And when I say that, you'll understand after I read this to you. This is a letter to Emperor Hadrian in the second century, where it says: "To the Egyptians, whom you are pleased to commend to me, I know thoroughly from a close observation to be a light, fickle, and constant people, changing with every turn of fortune. The Christians among them are worshipers of Serapis, and those calling themselves bishops of Christ scruple not to act as the votaries of that god. The truth is, there is no one, whether ruler of a synagogue, or Samaritan, or presbyter of the Christians, mathematician, astrologer, magician, Magi, that does not homage to Serapis. The patriarch himself of the church, when he comes to Egypt, is some compelled to worship Serapis, and others Christ. It is a race of men of almost seditious, vain, and mischievous." Hadrian also went on to find his own dying and rising mystery cult based on the strange death of his love for Antinous, who, undergoing a special mystery rites in the Nile, drowned at a young age. To connect us with the Christians that were actually living in Egypt at the time, the reason why I think there might be some truth to this is we look at Harpocrates, who is an early Christian Alexandrian. His name literally means Horus, or Horus the Child. And this deification process, apotheosis process, that is so common among the cult of Serapis, seems to be prevalent in this cult of Harpocrates. So I'm starting to look at this with more concern now. Another thing I think you should point out is a group of Egyptian Christians known as the Nazarenes, second century, and they were another syncretic group of Christians who had a hymn purpose to Attis, but was repurposed for Jesus. And it goes like this: "Blessed one, born of Chronos, Zeus, Ora, I loudly have thee, Jesus. You the Sirens call thrice, Adonis. Egypt calls you Osiris. Samothracian called you Adamas. The Phrygians, Pappas, a corpse, a god, unfruitful goat, heard green ear of harvested grain, fruitful almond-born, Orpheus, player of the pipes."
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