The Cult of Serapis in relation to the Neokoroi in Roman Egypt.

In 30 BCE the Ptolemaic era in Egypt had ended with the occupation of the sovereign state by the Roman Empire, led by the newly established imperator Gaius Julius Augustus. Egypt was incorporated as a province of the Roman empire and with that, the public administration became more Roman with Roman systems of government. One of such systems was the so called Koinon system, in origin a Greek custom to organize military alliances, a koina, between cities to protect themselves against rival cities, led by a city administration called the neokoroi. A member city of a koina was called a koinon city. However, the Romans based the koinon system not on military alliances but rather on a religious cult, the Emperor cult. The Emperor cult was a medium to establish the legitimacy of Roman rule over the provinces, as there was not one single dominant rulers cult, the emperors cult was specifically focussed on the ruling of the Emperor. During the Late Roman Republic local rulers cults were established to honour the roman generals or magistrates so the idea of a Emperors cult was not new in the Eastern Mediterranean. For Egypt the honouring or divination of the ruler has been a practice for centuries. The king of Egypt called Pharaoh was seen as the axis between the realm of the gods and the realm of mortals, and with that was honoured by divination. With the Ptolomaic dynasty taking over Egypt in 332 BCE after the Alexandrian conquest of Egypt, the Lagids did not overrule the traditional fabric of Egyptian rulers cult and the divination of the pharaoh, but rather, they build upon these fundaments to legitimize their ruling in Egypt. Native Egyptian gods were Hellenized in the sense that they were regarded as the same deities in the Greek Pantheon. However, during the early years of the Lagid dynasty, a new cult arose with a new deity that had previously not been mentioned: the Cult of Serapis. Before the fourth century BCE the deity Serapis was not known but after the third century onwards the cult is consistently mentioned, especially in Egypt. The Lagids were known to be temple-builders and granted royal edicts that benefitted the clergy in matters of taxation. The building of temples dedicated to Serapis and the divination of Serapis, functioned as the legitimization of the Lagid dynasty in Egypt. The question then arises to what extent was the function of the Neokoroi a continuity of Ptolemaic legitimacy during Roman Egypt in relation to the Cult of Serapis?

At first the Cult of Serapis was not a newly established religion with a new god but rather a syncretism of two native Egyptian gods namely Osiris and Apis and Hellenized. There has been a big debate on the identity of Serapis but the consensus is, as supported by Ulrich Wilcken, that the god of the Underworld Osiris and the bull god Apis were combined after Alexander's conquest of Egypt. The traditional introduction of the god Serapis is based on the dream Ptolomy II had, in which he was commanded by Serapis to bring a statue of the god from Sinope near the Black Sea to Alexandria. In doing so Ptolomy introduced the god to Egypt. However, it is far more likely that after Alexander the Great conquered (or liberated) Egypt from the Persian empire, he made a sacrifice to the Black Bull Apis and with that the image of the deceased god Apis in Memphis was created and presented as Osiris- Apis. The Lagids used this version of the god Apis, who stood for the fertility and strength of the king, as a representation of their rule. In true Greek fashion the God was not represented as a Black Bull but rather as a human being, having similarities to the god Zeus. In the early Ptolemaic era the state power and the clergy were combined as the Lagids were in charge of both the cult of Serapis and the building of temples. The means to pay for these immense projects originated from the revenues of the land they personally owned. The clergy was used to control the larger Egyptian population but slowly the later Lagid dynasty had to cede more power to the clergy.

In a papyrus text called ‘The Epistolary Rhetoric of Zoilos of Aspendos and the Early Cult of Sarapis’ Zoilos from Aspendos in Pamphylia made a rethoric appeal to the finance minister of Ptolomy II, Appollonios, the second most powerful official in Egypt around 12 or 13 February 257 BCE, to build a temple in the province of Asia. Zoilos asked for the opening of a sanctuary dedicated to Serapis, the fundings to build this and to make him the official in charge of this sanctuary. Beside the fact that any person could make appeals to the minister the wordings and the rhetorical skills shown in the papyrus shown that the cult was significant in the higher strata of Egyptian society. Zoilos mentions: “was worshipping the god Serapis for your good health and your success by the King Ptolemy II, it happened that Serapis [enjoined] to me several times in my dreams to sail to visit you and [tell you about] this injunction: a [temple] must be built for him together with a precinct in the Greek quarter near the harbour, and a priest must preside over the sacrifices and the cult on your behalf.” The papyrus was first edited and published in 1916 by Girolamo Vitelli and was first placed in the Zenon Archive in Philadelphea. There was in fact a temple dedicated to Serapis in Alexandria called the Serapieion during the reign of Ptolomy I. Alexandria was the seat of the Lagids and the most important city in Ptolomaic Egypt. It was also the seat of the Ruler cult for the Lagid dynasty themselves, distinct from the Cult of Serapis. Where the Cult of Serapis was the cult for legitimizing the Lagid dynasty as the rulers of Egypt, was the Ruler cult of the Lagid dynasty regarded as the divination of the dynasty itself. However, both cults merged into one as the Cult of Serapis and both elements were intertwined. The ruler cult as part of the divination of the ruler was a Greek custom originated from the honouring of heroes. In Ptolomaic Egypt and in the Seleucid empire the ruler cults were organized in the koinon cities to legitimize their ruler's power. When the Romans took over the Eastern Mediterranean in 27 BCE, the already established koina became the blueprint for the Roman provinces. It was the koinon cities themselves to interpret the legitimacy of the Roman Empire via the Emperor cult of Imperator Augustus.

It comes to no surprise that when the Romans conquered Egypt, the centre of power was in Alexandria. However, they introduced a new system of priests in light of the koinon system based on the decentral legacy of the Ptolomaic clergy. The newly established High priest of Alexandria functioned not only as the highest clerical official but also assumed responsibilities associated with the public office, somewhat like a neokoroi. Yet, it is not clear how central the duties of the High priest were for the whole province as the Cult of the Emperor was one of many cults including the Cult of Serapis. As the Imperial cult or the Emperors cult was practiced in the koina cities of the Eastern Mediterranean to legitimize the rule of Imperator August, the Cult of Serapis was immediately regarded as a native cult of Egypt representing the city of Alexandria rather than the continuity of the Legitimacy of the Lagid dynasty or the divination of them.