A serapeum is a temple or other religious institution dedicated to the syncretism Greco-Egyptian deity Serapis, who combined aspects of Osiris and Apis in a humanized form that was accepted by the Ptolemaic Greeks of Alexandria. There were several such religious centers, each of which was called a serapeion/serapeum () or poserapi (), coming from an Egyptian name for the temple of Osiris-Apis ().
Egyptian serapea
Alexandria
The Serapeum of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom was an ancient Greek temple built by Ptolemy III Euergetes. There are also signs of
Harpocrates. It has been referred to as the daughter of the Library of Alexandria. It existed until the end of the fourth century AD.
Saqqara
The Serapeum of Saqqara is located north west of the Pyramid of Djoser at
Saqqara, a necropolis near Memphis in
Lower Egypt. It was a burial place of the Apis,
that were incarnations of
Ptah. It was believed that the bulls became immortal after death as Osiris-Apis, a name shortened to Serapis in the Hellenic period.
Canopus
Another serapeum was located at Canopus, in the
Nile Delta near Alexandria. This sanctuary, dedicated to
Isis and her consort Serapis, became one of the most famous cult centers of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. Its festivals and rites were so popular that the site became an architectural model for sanctuaries to the Egyptian gods throughout the
Roman Empire.
At this Graeco-Roman site, a sacred temenos enclosed the temple dedicated to the gods, which was located behind a propylaea or peristyle court. Auxiliary shrines dedicated to other, less universal, Egyptian deities could be found here as well, including those dedicated to Anubis (Hermanubis), Hermes Trismegistus, the syncretism of Thoth and Hermes, Harpocrates, and others. Ritual complexes dedicated to Isis were often built around a well or a spring, which was meant to represent the miraculous annual inundation of the Nile. This was also the case in sanctuaries devoted to the Egyptian gods in Roman-era Delos, where a central basin provided the water element central in the rites of Isis.
Serapea in Italy
Regio tertia
The
Regio III within the city of Rome was named
Isis et Serapis because it contained a temple dedicated to the two Egyptian deities. The structure, originally dedicated to Isis alone, was built by Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius in the first half of the 1st century BCE to celebrate his father's victory over
Jugurtha.
The complex, of which only parts of the foundations remain, was originally terraced; during the Flavian dynasty, it underwent major renovations, and the cult of Serapis was associated to that of Isis. The temple was finally demolished during the 6th century.
Campus Martius
This temple, dedicated to Isis and Serapis, was first dedicated by the triumvirs in 43 BCE
[Cassius Dio. Historia Romana, XLVII, 15:4.] in Rome. However, due to later tensions between Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) and Marc Antony, the temple was not built. Following the Battle at Actium, Augustus banned the religion from within the pomerium of Rome altogether.
[Moehring, Horst R. "The Persecution of the Jews and the Adherents of the Isis Cult at Rome AD 19". Novum Testamentu 3.4 (1959): 294.] The temple was finally built by Gaius Caligula on the area known as
Campus Martius, between the
Saepta Julia and the temple of Minerva c. 37–41 CE.
[Momigliano, Arnaldo. On Pagans, Jews, and Christians. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1987: 88.]
The Serapeum, long and wide, was divided in three sections: a rectangular area could be accessed first by walking under monumental arches; an open square, adorned with red granite brought to the city during the 1st century and erected in couples, followed. The centre of the square was likely occupied by the temple dedicated to Isis, while the third section, a semicircular exedra with an apse presumably hosted the altar dedicated to Serapis. Fragments of the obelisks, some quite large, have been found around the current church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva; some archaeologists have proposed that the obelisk facing the Pantheon (see picture) may have been repositioned from the temple to its current location.
The building was destroyed in the great fire of the year 80 CE[Cassius Dio. Historia Romana, LXVI, 24:2.] and rebuilt by Domitian;[Eutropius. Breviarium, VII, 23:5.] further renovation was initiated by Hadrian, while Septimius Severus ordered the necessary upkeep of the temple's structure. Written records attest to the Serapeum's existence and ritual activity until the 5th century.
Quirinal Hill
The temple built on
Quirinal Hill and dedicated to Serapis was, by most surviving accounts, the most sumptuous and architectonically ambitious of those built on the hill; its remains are still visible between
Palazzo Colonna and the Pontifical Gregorian University.
The sanctuary, which lay between today's
piazza della Pilotta and the large square facing
Quirinal Palace, was built by
Caracalla on the western slopes of the hill, covering over , as its sides measured .
[Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, [1] .] It was composed by a long courtyard (surrounded by a
colonnade) and by the ritual area, where statues and obelisks had been erected. Designed to impress its visitors, the temple boasted columns tall and in diameter, visually sitting atop a marble stairway that connected the base of the hill to the sanctuary.
An enormous fragment of entablature, weighing approximately 100 tons and in volume (the largest in Rome), belongs to the original temple, as do the statues of the Nile and the Tiber, moved by Michelangelo to the Capitoline Hill in front of the Senate building.[Filippo Coarelli, Guida archeologica di Roma, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Verona 1984.]
Hadrian's Villa
Emperor Hadrian (117–138) ordered the construction of a "canopus" in his villa in Tivoli with typical imperial grandeur: an immense rectangular tank representing a canal, long by wide was surrounded by
and statues, leading the way to a Serapeum.
[Taylor, R. (2004). "Hadrian's Serapeum in Rome". American Journal of Archaeology, 108(2), 223–266.] Protected by a monumental
dome, the sanctuary was composed of a public area and a more intimate subterranean part that was dedicated to the
chthonic aspect of Serapis.
To mark the inauguration of his temple, Hadrian struck coinage that carry his effigy accompanied by Serapis, upon a dais where two columns support a round canopy. In this manner, the emperor became synnaos, a companion of the god's arcane Cella and equal beneficiary of the cult of Serapis at Canopus.
In February 2021, archaeologists led by researcher Rafael Hidalgo Prieto from the Pablo de Olavide University announced the discovery of remains of Hadrian's breakfast room which used to show his imperial power. They revealed a structure as a water triclinium and a separate dining room that served as a model for the well-known Serapeum in his villa.
Ostia Antica
The Serapeum of
Ostia Antica was inaugurated in 127 CE and dedicated to the syncretic cult of Jupiter Serapis.
It is a typical Roman sanctuary, on a raised platform and with a row of columns at the entrance, where a mosaic representing Apis in a typically Egyptian manner can still be seen. From this temple likely came the statue that Bryaxis copied for the Serapeum in Alexandria.
Pozzuoli
The Macellum of Pozzuoli, marketplace or
macellum of the Roman city of Puteoli (now known as
Pozzuoli) was first excavated in the 18th century, when the discovery of a statue of
Serapis led to the building being misidentified as the city's serapeum, the Temple of Serapis. Under that name, the site had considerable influence on early geology as a band of boreholes affecting the three standing columns suggested that the building had been partly below sea level for some period.
Serapea in Tunisia
A Latin inscription and other archaeological finds including statues, busts and other objects indicating the presence of a Serapeum from the Roman period in
Carthage, dedicated to the Egyptian deities
Isis and
Serapis.
[Jorge García Sánchez & José Luis Córdoba de la Cruz, En torno al Serapeum de Cartago, 2017.][Beschaouch, Azedine, Topographie de Carthage romaine: sur la localisation du temple d'Isis, in: Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, pp. 323–330, 1991. ]
Serapea in Turkey
Pergamon
Inside
Pergamon in
Bergama, there is the Temple of Serapis, built for the Egyptian gods in the 2nd century CE and called the
Red Basilica (
Kızıl Avlu in Turkish) by locals. This is a
basilica-shaped building constructed under the reign of
Hadrian. It consists of a main building and two round towers. In the
Christianity New Testament, the Church at Pergamon, inside the main building of the Red Basilica, is listed as one of the Seven Churches to which the Book of Revelation was addressed ().
Ephesus
Another serapeum was in
Ephesus, which is near present-day Selçuk, İzmir Province,
Turkey. The temple is located behind the Library of Celsus. This Egyptian temple was turned into a Christian church.
Miletus
This temple was built in the 3rd century BCE near the south agora of
Miletus and also it was restored by
Aurelian (270–275 CE).
[ Information about Miletus]
Alexandria
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Chuvin, Pierre, 1990 (B. A. Archer, translator). A Chronicle of the Last Pagans,(Harvard University Press). The incremental restrictions on "indigenous polytheism" of the governing class, chronicled from imperial edict to imperial edict.
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MacMullen, Ramsay, 1984. Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D. 100–400, (Yale University Press).
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Turcan, Robert, (1992) 1996. Cults of the Roman Empire (Blackwell). A translation of Les cultes orientaux dans le monde romain.
Saqqara
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Christophe, B. (2001). L'inscription dédicatoire de Khâemouaset au Sérapéum de Saqqara (Pl. V–XIII). Revue d'Égyptologie, 52, 29–55.
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Ostia
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Mar, R. (1992). El serapeum ostiense y la urbanística de la ciudad. Una aproximación a su estudio. BA, 13(15), 31–51.
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Bloch, H. (1959). The Serapeum of Ostia and the Brick-Stamps of 123 AD A New Landmark in the History of Roman Architecture. American Journal of Archaeology, 63(3), 225–240.
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Mar, R. (2001). El santuario de Serapis en Ostia.
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Mols, S. (2007). The Urban Context of the Serapeum at Ostia. Babesch, 82(1), 227–232.
Rome
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Filippo Coarelli, "Iseum et Serapeum in Campo Martio; Isis Campensis", in E. M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae ( LTUR), vol. 3, 1996, pp. 107–109.
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Filippo Coarelli, "I monumenti dei culti orientali a Roma", in La soteriologia dei culti orientali nell'Impero romano, Leiden, Brill, 1982, pp. 33–67. ().
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Serena Ensoli, "I santuari di Iside e Serapide a Roma e la resistenza pagana in età tardoantica" in Aurea Roma, Roma, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2000, pp. 273–282. ().
Pozzuoli
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Charles Dubois. Cultes et dieux à Pouzzoles. Roma, 1902.
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Charles Dubois. Pouzzoles Antique. Parigi, 1907.
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