Serapis

Serapis (Latin spelling, or Sarapis in Greek) was a syncretic Hellenistic-Egyptian god in Antiquity. His most renowned temple was at Alexandria. Under Ptolemy Soter, efforts were made to integrate Egyptian religion with that of their Hellenic rulers. Ptolemy's policy was to find a deity that should win the reverence alike of both groups, despite the curses of the Egyptian priests against the gods of the previous foreign rulers (i.e Set who was lauded by the Hyksos). Alexander the Great had attempted to use Amun for this purpose, but he was more prominent in Upper Egypt, and not as popular with those in Lower Egypt, where the Greeks had stronger influence. The Greeks had little respect for animal-headed figures, and so a Greek-style anthromorphic statue was chosen as the idol, and proclaimed as the equivalent of the highly popular Apis. It was named Aser-hapi (i.e. Osiris-Apis), which became Serapis, and was said to be Osiris in full, rather than just his Ka (life force).

DICTIONARY OF ROMAN COINS

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Serapis. -- The mythology of the Eyptians is more than usually obscure and difficult in explaining the powers and attributes of this divinity, whose name and worship, however thought not known to them in the earliest age, was at a later period held above all others in the highest reverence and distinction by that superstitious people.

That the ancients themselves were at variance with each other respacting Serapis is show by that passage in Tacitus wherein it is affirmed that many recognised in this god, Aesculapius, imputing the healing of sickness to his intervention; some though him identical with Osiris, the oldest diety of the Egyptians; others regarded him as Jupiter, possessing univeral power; but by most he was believed to be the same as Pluto, the "gloomy" Dis Pater of the infernal regions. T

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