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

god who had beaten death, like Osiris. As such he could see into the future and hence could be appealed to as an oracle, a hugely popular idea in both the Greek and Egyptian worlds. Creating another oracular center in Alexandria would be a real coup, bringing wealth and prestige to the city, perhaps making it a place to rival Delphi or Siwa and granting whoever controlled it (namely Ptolemy) enormous power over those who might make important political decisions based on its pronouncements.
    But there was a danger that all these powers made the new god seem a somber and frightening character, particularly to the Greeks. The Egyptian and Greek attitudes to death stood at extreme ends of the spectrum, so a unified god of death had to tread carefully. In the Hellenistic world the afterlife was a dull, gray place—a dusty land of regret where the dead looked back in sorrow at what they had, and hadn’t, done in life. For the Egyptians it was quite the opposite. Egyptians looked forward to death as a time and place where the very best in life was made eternal. Planning for death—building tombs and preparing grave goods—was not a solemn undertaking but often a hobby, something to be done in one’s spare time and enjoyable. They did not wish for death but knew that after death, when they had, in the idiom of the day, “gone to the west,” all that was good in life could await them there (provided they had prepared carefully beforehand).
    To compensate for the negative image that Serapis’s associations with death created in Greek minds, he was also cast for them as a Dionysian character. He was an ebullient, festive god, filled with life and the love of life, who indulged in banquets and festivals: a Bacchic figure who, in the knowledge that a Greek afterlife was much less fun than an Egyptian one, encouraged his followers to seize the day and enjoy this life to the full. In short, he was all things to all men and women.
    If the Alexandrians still needed persuading, Ptolemy had another weapon in his armory—philosophers. Demetrius of Phalerum had been a philosopher of the Peripatetic school, a pupil of Aristotle, and an Athenian statesman. His ten-year rule in Athens had brought peace to the city until its invasion by one of the heirs of Alexander forced him from power and overseas to Alexandria. He arrived here with an extraordinary reputation as a thinker and a politician, the protector of Athenian liberty, the regulator of her laws, and a fine orator and writer. As such he was later to play a key role in turning Alexandria into the center of the ancient world; but before any of the real work began, Ptolemy wanted him to support the new cult of Serapis. And Demetrius seems to have been glad to help.
    The story that went around the city shortly after his arrival was that he had been struck blind. This of course was a disaster for Demetrius, Ptolemy, and Alexandria. But good news followed rapidly on the heels of bad when the announcement was made that through a miracle, his sight had been restored. And how had this miracle come about? He had simply prayed to the new god Serapis, in his role as god of healing, and Serapis had done the rest. To celebrate, Demetrius then put his considerable lyrical skills to use in composing the first of his paeans, in which he demonstrated his gratitude for the god’s intervention.
    There is, of course, a chance that events happened exactly as the story said, but the arrival of an old friend of Aristotle’s at Ptolemy’s court at this time, in need of friendship and protection but with an astute and practical knowledge of the politics of the Hellenistic world, was perhaps more likely to have been a public relations opportunity too good to miss.
    Nor was Demetrius the only Greek thinker to be held up as an acolyte of Serapis in an attempt to persuade the Alexandrians. One of the most popular Greek cults of the time was the Eleusinian mystery cult of Demeter and Persephone. The annual