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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9786403" data-attributes="member: 58172">Ancient Egyptian religions are difficult to keep track of. Each town has its own religious system, and even each of these shift over periods of time. [USER=25818]@RealAlHazred[/USER], I think the approach of your OP is correct, to specify a single town Alexandria during a specific time period Hellenist Ptolemaic.I was thinking about Osiris-Apis, aka Sorapis, Sarapis, Serapis. He is essentially the sundisk. The sun is the light of the sky (whence Greek Helios) whose sunlight is lifegiving energy (whence healing Asklepios). The sun sets in the west and then travels thru the upsidedown underworld illuminating the souls of the dead there (whence earthy Pluto and underworld Hades). The sun then rises again in the east, thus a cyclical death and resurrection of the sundisk. The sundisk is the chief deity (whence Zeus) (and the aspect of the fertility of the bull Apis probably relates specific stories of Zeus in the form of a bull). The identification of Serapis as Egyptian Amun of the primordeal Eight, literally the "hidden one", associates the cosmic transcendent aspects of creation, where the sundisk visually represents the mystical creative force. The identification of Serapis with the wine of Greek Dionusos, probably relates to the deathly aspects. The crushing of grapes relates to death and the alcohol of wine relates to a pleasurable and joyous afterlife in the underworld, whence pouring libations of wine to the ground. Hence the sundisk Serapis also functions as a luminous lifegiver to the underworld and as the cyclical mediator between both the dead under ground and the living above ground.</blockquote>

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