SERAPIS

An Egyptian deity. The image and worship of this god were brought from Sinope in Pontus to Alexandria, in the last year of Ptolemy Soter, in consequence, it is said, of a vision of Ptolemy I. According to some accounts, this image was a statue of Jupiter; but however this may have been, Serapis was clearly, as Sir G. Wilkinson expre es it (,Anc. Egypt, iv. 3G0.), " at most a Greeco-Egyptian deity." And there is no foundation for the notion entertained by some early Christian fathers, that he represented the Patriarch Joseph (which they supported by an argument drawn from the ornament in the shape of a bushel which the images of this god usually bore on the head); or for that of some modern antiquaries, that it was another name for Apis. {Plui. de Is. et Osir. Quart. Rev., July, 1840.) [s. 1117]