Free The Rise and Fall of Alexandria by Justin Pollard Page A

Hellenize the priestly caste in the temples and make them look more favorably on Greek rule. One such Egyptian who would prove vital in Ptolemy’s religious plans was Manetho.
    Manetho was an Egyptian high priest in Heliopolis, one of the ancient cult capitals of the country since the days of the pyramid builders, which lies today engulfed in the urban sprawl of Cairo. He was also a historian, which gave him added benefits when it came to legitimizing Ptolemy’s rule. Indeed the chronological lists of pharaohs used by Egyptologists today is still based on one drawn up by Manetho, one which seamlessly integrates the Ptolemies, of course. The plan the two devised was to create a new cult based in the temple that stood over the tombs of the Apis bulls in which a personification of those dead animals could be worshipped as Osorapis—a fusion of the god of the dead, Osiris, and the living bull, Apis.
    The results must have sounded thoroughly Egyptian; but it was in their interpretation by Ptolemy and his Greek-influenced helpers that we begin to see how the fusion was enacted. The great cult statue of Serapis was commissioned by Ptolemy from the Greek master sculptor Bryaxis, who, with three others, had been responsible for a side each of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus. His Serapis was represented not in Egyptian form with combined human and animal elements, but as a benign, bearded man, seated on a throne and wearing the crown of fertility (the modius ). To represent his power over the dead, the power of Osiris, the three-headed dog of the Greek underworld, Cerberus, crouched at his right knee. In his left hand he held aloft a wand similar to the staff of the Greek god of healing, Asclepius. In fact his image must have looked remarkably similar to Zeus, but this was Zeus imbued with thousands of years of Egyptian religious power. To the Greeks he could easily be seen as a Greek god ruling an alien land, but to the Egyptians his outward appearance was simply a new manifestation of the age-old truths that Egyptians, and Egyptians alone, had always known.
    Ptolemy wanted not only to establish this Greco-Egyptian cult as quickly as possible but also to locate its center in his new capital, Alexandria, away from the powerful influence of the old temple administrations. It must also have seemed appropriate that this new city should have its own, new and unique god protecting it, housed in a temple which bore the same name as the last resting place of the Apis bulls—the Serapeum. But the inhabitants of Alexandria—Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians—would require some convincing. To do this Ptolemy not only had to call on the right people to support his idea but had to frame his new deity in a way that appealed to the eclectic audience of his new city.
    As such, the new god Serapis had to combine many of the best features of a number of gods. Importantly, he was cast as a god of healing, a deity who had a practical everyday value that would bring him into the lives of anyone who was (or knew someone who was) sick. This power was indicated by his Asclepius-like staff, which indicated to the Greeks this facet of his being. For the Egyptian audience he was equated in this to Imhotep, the supposed architect of the first pyramid who was later worshipped as a god of healing. He was also given some of the personal appeal of Asclepius in that it was said that he was a god who came privately to people and spoke to them in their dreams. He was thus someone who could be appealed to personally, rather than simply through the offices of a priestly caste cut off from the normal population in the forbidden realm of the adytum, the exclusive priestly inner sanctum.
    These healing powers and his association with the dead Apis, and hence Osiris, god of the netherworld, also gave him different powers that would appeal to the Alexandrian audience. He was a god who stood outside the realms of fate, beyond the fickle chances of the everyday world. He was a