the old hieratic idols by more
attractive images and gave them the beauty of the immortals. It is not
known who created the figure of Isis draped in a linen gown with a fringed
cloak fastened over the breast, whose sweet meditative, graciously maternal
face is a combination of the ideals imagined for Hera and Aphrodite. But we
know the sculptor of the first statue of Serapis that stood in the great
sanctuary of Alexandria until the end of paganism. This statue, the
prototype of all the copies that have been preserved, is a colossal work of
art made of precious materials by a famous Athenian sculptor named Bryaxis,
a contemporary of Scopas. It was one of the last divine creations of
Hellenic genius. The majestic head, with its somber and yet benevolent
expression, with its abundance of hair, and with a crown in the shape of a
bushel, bespoke the double character of a god ruling at the same time both
the fertile earth and the dismal realm of the dead.[7]

As we see, the Ptolemies had given their new religion a literary and
artistic shape that was capable of attracting the most refined and cultured
minds. But the adaptation to the Hellenic feeling and thinking was not
exclusively external. Osiris, the god whose worship was thus renewed, was
more adapted than any other to lend his authority to the formation of a
syncretic faith. At a very early period, in fact before the time of
Herodotus, Osiris had been identified with Dionysus, and Isis with Demeter.
M. Foucart has {77} endeavored to prove in an ingenious essay that this
assimilation was not arbitrary, that Osiris and Isis came into Crete and
Attica during the prehistoric period, and that they were mistaken for
Dionysus and Demeter[8] by the people of those regions. Without going back
to those remote ages, we shall merely say with him that the mysteries of
Dionysus were connected with those of Osiris by far-reaching affinities,
not simply by superficial and fortuitous resemblances. Each commemorated
the history of a god governing both vegetation and the underworld at the
same time, who was put to death and torn to pieces by an enemy, and whose
scattered limbs were collected by a goddess, after which he was
miraculously revived. The Greeks must have been very willing to adopt a
worship in which they found their own divinities and their own myths again
with something more poignant and more magnificent added. It is a very
remarkable fact that of all the many deities worshipe