Popular religion in Greco-Roman Egypt: the cult of Serapis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2177-4218.v12i1p81-110Keywords:
Greco-Roman Egypt, Cultural entanglement, Popular religion, Serapis, TerracottaAbstract
Serapis was a god created by Ptolemy I Soter, first pharaoh of the Lagid dynasty (305-30 B.C.) as guardian god of the new sovereigns and the city of Alexandria. Serapis’s iconographic representation followed the pattern of the Greek deities. But it is also the result of a properly Egyptian element in the name. Based on the material culture made of terracotta, from Greco-Roman Egypt and representing Serapis, we intend to analyze the religious practices and popular religion associated with the god. We start from the hypothesis that Serapis is the result of the contact and entanglement of the Egyptian and Greek religion, the result of an environment marked by miscegenation and close cultural contact.
Downloads
References
Fontes
British museum. (2020, 16 de agosto). Collection online. London. Recuperado de: <https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection>.
Dunand, F. (1990). Catalogue des terres cuites gréco-romaines d’Égypte. Musée du Louvre. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux.
Dunand, F. (1979). Religion populaire en Égypte romaine. Les terres cuites isiaques du Musée du Caire. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Plutarque. (1988). Oeuvres morales. Tome V. 2ª partie. Isis et Osiris. Trad. Christian Froidefond. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Plutarque. (1995). Obras morales y de costumbres (Moralia). VI. Isis y Osiris. Diálogos Píticos. Trad. Francisca Pordomingo Pardo e José Antonio Fernández Delgado. Madrid: Gredos. (Biblioteca Clásica Gredos).
Obras
Alston, R. (1995). Soldier and society in Roman Egypt. A Social History. London/New York: Routledge.
Alston. (2002). The city in roman and byzantine Egypt. London and New York: Routledge.
Bastos, M. T. (2016). Análise e distribuição espacial de lucernas romanas de disco: o caso das províncias da Palestina e do norte da África. (Tese de Doutorado). Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.
Bowman, A. K. (1989). Egypt after the Pharaohs 332 B.C.-A. 642: from Alexander to the Arab Conquest. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Brancaglion, A. (2003). Manual de arte e arqueologia do Egito Antigo. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Sociedade dos Amigos do Museu Nacional.
Brancaglion, A. (2004). Manual de arte e arqueologia do Egito Antigo II. Rio de Janeiro, RJ: Sociedade dos Amigos do Museu Nacional.
Burkert, W. (1993). Religião grega na época Clássica e Arcaica. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.
Capponi, L. (2011). Roman Egypt. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011.
Castro, E. J., Jr. (2019). Espaço funerário em Alexandria: tumba principal de Kom el-Shoqafa, séculos I e II d.C. (Dissertação de Mestrado). Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brasil.
Cunha, L. T. P. (2016). O sagrado na Roma imperial do séc. II d.C.: construção especial e ritualística do culto isíaco na obra O Asno de Ouro (Dissertação de Mestrado). Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brasil.
Donadoni, S. (Dir.). (1990). O homem egípcio. Lisboa: Editorial Presença.
Duarte, C.A. (2010). Estudo sobre a iconografia de Ápis durante o período faraônico. (Tese de Doutorado). Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.
Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, Ch. (1991). Dieux et hommes en Égypte – 3000 av. J.-C.-395 apr. J.-C.. Paris: Armand Colin.
Frankfurter, D. (1998). Religion in roman Egypt. Assimilation and Resistance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gama-Rolland, C. A. O contato com os deuses: as práticas mágico-religiosas no Egito Antigo. (2017) In C. K. B. Dias, S. C. Silva, & C. E. C. Campos (Org.), Experiências religiosas no mundo antigo (pp. 49-65). Curitiba, PR: Prismas.
Leão, D. F. (2012). A globalização no Mundo Antigo: do polites ao kosmopolites. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra.
Manning, J. G. (2019). The ptolemaic governmental branches and role of temples and elite groups. In K. Vandorpe (Ed.), A companion to greco-roman Egypt and Late Antique Egypt (pp. 103-118). Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Moyer, I. S. (2011). Egypt and the limits of hellenism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Naether, F. (2019). New deities new habits. In K. Vandorpe (Ed.), A companion to greco-roman Egypt and Late Antique Egypt (pp. 439-448). Hoboken, NJ : John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Neiva, C. O. (2017). O Poder legitimador de Serápis em disputa na época Antonina (96-192): um estudo comparado entre a iconografia monetária alexandrina e os Acta Alexandrinorum (Dissertação de Mestrado). Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.
Sales, J. C. (2007). O culto de Serápis e a coexistência heleno-egípcia na Alexandria ptolomaica. Revista lusófona de ciências das religiões. (12), 309-322.
Sandri, S. Terracottas. (2012). In C. Riggs (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of roman Egypt (pp. 630-647). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shafer, B. E. (Org.). (2002). As religiões no Egito Antigo. Deuses, mitos e rituais domésticos. Trans. Luís S. Krausz. São Paulo, SP: Nova Alexandria.
Stockhammer, Ph. (Ed.). (2012). Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization: a transdisciplinary approach. Heldelberg: Springer.
Vasques, M. S. (2000). A religião isíaca no Egito greco-romano: as estatuetas de terracota (Dissertação de Mestrado). Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.
Vasques. (2005). Crenças funerárias e identidade cultural no Egito romano: máscaras de múmia. (Tese de Doutorado). Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Danillo Melo da Fonseca
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Responsibility for the content published by Mare Nostrum rests exclusively with the author(s) of such content.
The reproduction of the texts published by Mare Nostrum is licensed according to Creative Commons license Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC).
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).