The Greek qualities of Serapis were combined with Egyptian ideas, reflecting the military marriage of Ptolemy and the Egyptians. The regenerative or “resurrection” aspects of Serapis’s cult were linked with Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld and the afterlife. In addition to his title as “Lord of the Dead,” Osiris was also the “Lord of Living.” According to his mythology, after he was killed and dismembered, he was physically reassembled and resurrected by his wife, Isis, except for his penis, which she was unable to find. His resurrection and apotheosis mirrored the annual flooding of the Nile and the vernal renewal of life.
Thus, out of two diverse cultures, a new god was born. “Serapis” combined the religion of Greek conquerors and that of their new Egyptian subjects, all in accordance with the accepted political statecraft of the day.
Isis, the wife of Osiris/Serapis, with the baby Horus
To both Greeks and Egyptians, the seasonal renewal of life by their new fertility deity Serapis represented resurrection after death and a happier afterlife. And the Serapis cult’s close association with Aesclepius/Aesculapius, the Greek god of healing and medicine, credited Serapis as a healer god, like Apollo.
So, we can now see why it is no accident that the extraordinary healing miracles performed by Vespasian were staged at the Serapian temple in Alexandria.
Aesclepius, directly identified with Serapis, was the son of Apollo. He shared with his father the title Paean (the Healer), but he was also the child of a mortal mother, Coronis, who died before delivering him. Apollo saved the infant Aesclepius by cutting him from his mother’s womb on her funeral pyre (explaining the name “Aesclepius,” meaning "to cut open”). Apollo took the demigod child to Chiron the Centaur, who then instructed him in the art of medicine.
Aesclepius, it seems, became so talented at healing that he was soon able to raise the dead. He proceeded to bring a number of figures from Greek mythology back from the dead: Lycurgus, Capaneus, the prophet Tyndareus, Glaucus, Orion and the hero Hippolytus (who enjoyed his own apotheosis to become a god). At some point, the gods became vexed by all of these resurrections. According to one source, Hades was annoyed that his subjects, the souls of the dead, were being “stolen” from him by Aesclepius.
So, according to myth, Zeus struck the demigod healer Aesclepius dead with a thunderbolt. Afterwards, however, Zeus reconsidered, restoring him to life and making him a god, thus fulfilling a prophecy that Aesclepius would become a god only to be killed and return to divine status, “twice renewing” his fate. (23)
Observe that Aesclepius was in this way like Jesus Christ: a child of both god and mortal, a healer who resurrected the dead and who suffered death only to be resurrected and experience his own apotheosis and transmutation into a god.
Like a number of other figures from pagan myth, Aesclepius was a suffering savior god, specifically one who was worshiped for his powers to heal and, it seems, to help his devotees obtain a better afterlife.
Christians who find it implausible that a person who suffered the ignominious death of crucifixion could ever be thought of as a god by the ancients, and from this proceed to argue the historical veracity of the Gospels, ignore this crucial reality. Many gods in the ancient world were said to have suffered on earth, to have been martyred and then resurrected, prior to Jesus. The devotee could better identify with his god for this very reason. Heracles (Hercules) provides yet one more example of this recurrent classical theme. Like the youth in Ptolemy’s vision of Serapis, and like Romulus and Moses, Jesus was also “taken up” into heaven.
Here is an image of the god Serapis, created by Ptolemy to unite his newly-conquered kingdom:
Serapis, 3rd Century BCE bronze
On his head is a “modius” or grain measure, showing that he is a fertility god with roots in Eleusis, and, as a symbol also worn by Hades (or Pluto), it also associates him with the afterlife. Sometimes he’s represented without a modius on his head, such as in this silver 2nd Century bust from Egypt:
Serapis, Egypt, 2nd Century CE
The name “Serapis” is partially derived from the Egyptian bull god “Apis,” whose fertility was linked to Osiris. Thus Ptolemy’s god, “Osiris-Apis,” in time, became “Sir-Apis.”
The Greeks and Romans, of course, disliked animal gods, preferring human-shaped deities, instead. The emperor Augustus famously refused to pay respects to Apis when he was in Egypt, saying, “I am used to worshipping gods, not cattle.” Therefore, under the Ptolemys and later the Romans, Serapis is almost invariably represented as a benevolent human and loving father figure, like this:
Serapis
Serapis was also a prophetic or oracular deity, like Apollo. And since Serapis is closely associated with—even identified with—Aesclepius, he is also linked to Apollo and healing.
This tradition of combining gods continued into Rome as evinced by this curious 1st Century bronze statue of a “pantheistic deity,” which syncretizes Zeus carrying his thunder in one hand and Apollo’s bow in another while wearing an Egyptian solar crown and the symbols of other gods. Just as Christianity is taking shape, Rome, at the confluence of all rivers, was already conjuring a universalized image of God:
1st Century pantheistic deity, Rome
It is interesting that as we have just done, Tacitus found it necessary to explain the origins of Ptolemy’s god, Serapis, to provide the necessary historical context before describing the miracles of Vespasian.
What were these miracles that the future emperor of Rome performed at the temple of Serapis?
Vespasian
From Tacitus’s Histories, Book IV:
In the months during which Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the periodical return of the summer gales and settled weather at sea, many wonders occurred which seemed to point him out as the object of the favor of heaven and of the partiality of the Gods. One of the common people of Alexandria, well-known for his blindness, threw himself at the Emperor's knees, and implored him with groans to heal his infirmity. This he did by the advice of the God Serapis, whom this nation, devoted as it is to many superstitions, worships more than any other divinity. He begged Vespasian that he would deign to moisten his cheeks and eyeballs with his spittle. Another with a diseased hand, at the counsel of the same God, prayed that the limb might feel the print of a Cæsar's foot. At first Vespasian ridiculed and repulsed them. They persisted; and he, though on the one hand he feared the scandal of a fruitless attempt, yet, on the other, was induced by the entreaties of the men and by the language of his flatterers to hope for success. At last he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be taken, as to whether such blindness and infirmity were within the reach of human skill. They discussed the matter from different points of view. "In the one case," they said, "the faculty of sight was not wholly destroyed, and might return, if the obstacles were removed; in the other case, the limb, which had fallen into a diseased condition might be restored, if a healing influence were applied; such, perhaps, might be the pleasure of the Gods, and the Emperor might be chosen to be the minister of the divine will; at any rate, all the glory of a successful remedy would be Cæsar's, while the ridicule of failure would fall on the sufferers." And so Vespasian, supposing that all things were possible to his good fortune [Destiny], and that nothing was any longer past belief, with a joyful countenance, amid the intense expectation of the multitude of bystanders, accomplished what was required. The hand was instantly restored to its use, and the light of day again shone upon the blind. Persons actually present attest both facts, even now when nothing is to be gained by falsehood. (Emphasis added.) (24)