Realizing that the new capital city of Alexandria needed a patron deity, Ptolemy summoned the Egyptian priest Manetho of Sebennytos and the Greek priest Timotheos of Athens, and invited them to design a new god with no pre-existing allegiance to either a city or a dynasty, and no powerful, long-established priesthood. Such a god, if he appealed to both Egyptians and Greeks, might go some way towards uniting Alexandria’s religiously mixed population.
The result was Serapis, a combination of Osiris and the Greek Dionysos, Hades (god of the underworld), Asklepios (god of medicine), Helios (the sun god) and Zeus (king of the gods). An anthropomorphic deity – animal and animal–human hybrid gods being unacceptable to non-Egyptians – Serapis personified divine kingship, healing, fertility and the afterlife. His name was derived from the name of the Memphite god Osor-Apis, himself a fusion of Osiris and the deceased Apis bull, and he borrowed heavily from their mythology. Serapis was married to the universally popular Isis who, as the wife of Osiris, was already acceptable to both Greeks and Egyptians. The triad of Serapis, Isis and their son Harpocrates quickly came to be associated with the ruling Ptolemaic dynasty. While the native Egyptians showed little interest in their new god, Serapis enjoyed a huge success throughout the Greek and Roman worlds.
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