OSIRIS SERAPIS AND DIONYSUS
Osiris
Osiris, companion of Isis, is one of the most famous Egyptian deities. According to Plutarch, he promoted the civilisation of humanity, arousing the envy of his brother Seth, who killed him and threw him into the Nile.
Isis and Nephtis found the dismembered body, and Anubis embalmed it. Isis resurrected him and conceived Horus, while Osiris became the god of resurrection and the underworld.
His cult, originating in Abydos and Busiris, spread widely, opposing the Pharaonic religion.
With the Middle Kingdom, Osiris became the model of the ‘justified’ deceased, a symbol of rebirth. Associated with vegetation, he was depicted with a green face, and little statues with wheat seeds were placed in tombs to magically promote resurrection.
In the ceremony of psychostasy, he presided over the court of the dead.
He was represented as a mummy wearing the crown of Upper Egypt and the sceptres pastoral and flagellum. In Alexandrian times, his cult was partially replaced by Serapis, but he continued to be worshipped in Italy as the god of the underworld and fertility linked to the Nile.
To Osiris were dedicated the Great Mysteries, initiation rites spread throughout the Mediterranean.
Lucius, protagonist of the Golden Ass, after his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, also received that of the ‘most august of gods’, Osiris. Still in the 5th century A.D., the Inventio Osiridis was celebrated in Phalen, in honour of the god of vegetation.
Serapis
After Isis, the most venerated deity in the Alexandrian era was Serapis, introduced into Egypt by Ptolemy I Soter (305-285 BC).
Although he had Egyptian origins, he was a deity with strong Greek influences, identified with Osiris-Api. According to Plutarch and Tacitus, King Ptolemy, after a vision, had a statue of the god transported to Alexandria from Sinope, thus giving impulse to his cult.
Serapis was worshipped as god of the underworld and fertility, often depicted with the modius on his head and accompanied by a three-headed Cerberus-like monster. The most famous iconography, attributed to the sculptor Bryaxis, depicts him bearded, seated on a throne, with the modius decorated with ears of corn and olive branches, holding the sceptre and extending a hand towards the monster.
In addition to this representation, he also appears standing in the act of offering libations or blessing.
Serapis was associated with the sun and prosperity: the calathos was not an indispensable attribute of his, often replaced by a solar halo. In Greek and Latin inscriptions he appears as Zeus-Helios-Serapis or Jupiter-Sol-Serapis.
His cult spread throughout the Mediterranean, with numerous Serapei in Italy, including those of Pozzuoli (105 BC), the Campus Martius and the Quirinal in Rome. Serapis was also a healing god: in his temples, the sick received miraculous cures or dreams revealing the remedies. Famous was the Serapeum of Canopus, associated with Isis and Anubis.
Serapis was identified with several deities, including Zeus, Dionysus and Aesculapius, but rarely with Osiris, except at Pompeii, where amphorae with water from the Nile bore the inscription Σεραπῖδος δῶρα (‘Gift of Serapis’).
Dionysus
In Memphis Serapis was associated with Dionysus.
Statues along the access roads to his temple depicted infant Dionysus on a panther, a lion, Cerberus and, rarely, a peacock with grapes. In Italy too, Serapis was associated with Dionysus: a Roman dedication linked Sol-Serapis-Jupiter to Liber Pater, and an epigraph testifies to the worship of Dionysus by a priestess of Isis.
In Pompeii, behind the cell of the Iseus, a bas-relief showed Bacchus as a child with a panther, while a fresco depicted Isis next to Bacchus.
A bas-relief in the Louvre depicts Isis, Serapis, Harpocrates and Dionysus, suggesting that Serapis had doubled himself: as god of the dead he was Osiris, as resurrected god he identified with the young Dionysus.
This idea is illustrated in a sarcophagus in the Fitzwilliam Museum, where Serapis and Dionysus fight over a basket containing a child, symbol of the risen dead.
The myth of Dionysus Zagreus, dismembered and reassembled as Osiris, bears many similarities to the Egyptian myth.
Isis' journey to Byblos is also reminiscent of Demeter's journey to Eleusis, both nurturing a royal child that they immerse in fire to make it immortal.
The Ptolemies were devoted to Dionysus: Ptolemy II Philadelphus organised a great Dionysian thiasos and called himself New Dionysus.
The Lagid queens, on the other hand, honoured Isis. The most famous couple assimilated to Dionysus and Isis was Antony and Cleopatra.
SOURCE: B. de Rachewiltz, A. M. Partini - ROMA EGIZIA: cults, temples and Egyptian divinities in Imperial Rome - Mediterranean Editions Rome
