Serapis: God of Fertility and the Afterlife that United Greeks and Egyptians

Serapis (also called Sarapis) was a deity invented by the Ptolemies, and was meant to bridge the gap between their Egyptian and Greek subjects. The Ptolemies were one of the successors of Alexander the Great, and ruled over Egypt until it was conquered by the Romans in 30 BC. As the Ptolemies were a foreign dynasty, and had both Greek and Egyptian subjects, they needed to take measures to solidify their rule. One of these was the invention of the Greco-Egyptian deity Serapis.

Serapis and Osirapis: Appealing to the Egyptians

The man responsible for the creation of Serapis was Ptolemy I, one of Alexander the Great’s most capable generals, and the founder of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.

The name of this god is said to have been a fusion of the Egyptian deity Osiris and the sacred Apis bull. Prior to the coming of the Ptolemies, the cults of these two deities had already merged and a combined god, Osirapis, was worshipped by the Egyptians. Osirapis may be said to have represented the essence of ancient Egyptian religion at the time. Thus, by using these deities as the core of Serapis, the Egyptian subjects of Ptolemaic Egypt could easily identify familiar elements in the new deity.