An Egyptian God in a Greek Pantheon? Sarapis, Egyptian Dreams, and Sacred Texts in Ailios Aristeides’ Hieroi Logoi and Hymn to Sarapis

Abstract

Ailios Aristeides saw himself as steeped in the tradition of Greek paideia, and his choice and representation of divinities largely reflect the same interest in classical ‘Greekness’ which pervades his works as a whole. One exception stands out: the ‘Egyptian’ gods Isis and, more prominently, Sarapis. The fact that Aristeides worships these gods is not in itself surprising, given their popularity in the second century CE. It does, however, raise the question of how Aristeides integrates them into a pantheon which he understands as rooted in a tradition without them. This article examines how Aristeides constructs and incorporates the ‘foreignness’ of Sarapis in the Hieroi Logoiand Hymn to Sarapisand what he gains from the god’s connection to Egypt. Aristeides, it is argued, balances Egyptian-connotated and Greek testimony to raise Sarapis to the status of a universal god and to make him comparable and compatible with a traditional picture of Greek divinity without assimilating him. Sarapis retains just enough Egyptian colouring to distinguish him from the other gods and lend Aristeides’ writings and religiosity a touch of ‘Egyptianness’. By assuming the compatibility of Egyptian and Greek religious traditions instead of either completely Hellenising or exoticising Sarapis, Aristides can draw on the authority of both to enhance, via Sarapis, his own claims to extra-institutional religious authority and exceptional nearness to the divine. His enterprise is facilitated by the importance of the written word as the basis of imperial Greek intellectual identity. Textuality gives Aristeides a way to bridge classical tradition with post-classical cultic reality: classical Greek texts supply him with a tradition of writing about Egypt into which he can fit the (for him) Egyptian god Sarapis, and the association of Egypt with expressly religious writings, with abundant ‘sacred texts’, both complements the very limited role of sacred texts in traditional Greek literature and religion and appeals to the value and authority which pepaideumenoiattach to the written word.