The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

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Serapis,
THE EVIL EYE chap.
Upon the shield of one of the Amazons, painted on a
famous vase at Arezzo (see Dennis, Etrm'ia, vol. ii.
p. 387)/'^ Moreover, when we consider that the
whole of the symbols here combined, beginning
with the bust of Serapis, are essentially Egyptian, it
is but reasonable to interpret the unknown from the
well known, ^'^^
Serapis, or Jupiter Serapis, the Egyptian
divinity whose bust is placed upon the mons Jovis
of the hand, was chiefly worshipped at Alexandria.
His cult was introduced into Greece in the time of
the Ptolemies, and afterwards, against much opposi-
tion,^^^ into Rome. One ruined temple at least
still exists in Italy called a Scrapeon^ and others
called Iseons, in which latter, I sis as well as Serapis
was worshipped. The best known of the former is
at Pozzuoli, and of the latter at Pompeii. That at
Pozzuoli specially recalls the connection of that
port with Alexandria. In a ship of Alexandria
trading with Italy St. Paul sailed, and so landed at
Pozzuoli (Puteoli, Acts xxviii. 13). The Egyptian
divinity was Osiris, called Osiris-Apis or Serapis, "''^
who in Egyptian sculpture often has the head of the
bull Apis, crowned with the disc and horns like Isis.
He was essentially a sun-god ; so also is Jupiter
an attribute symbolised by the flower-basket
or calatlms upon his head, to express the height of
the sun above us.*'^, Innumerable are the statues,
*^l There are plenty of Egyptian vase amulets, pierced for suspension, in
the Ashmolean Museum. Their shape and general type show their object
conclusively. At the same place is an Etruscan necklace of gold canthari.
^^^ i'retorius has learnedly explained that a brazen jar typified the bright-
ness of the Great Goddess {Dc Pollicc, p. 210).
473 Smith's Classical Did. s.v. "Isis."
^'^ Wilkinson, Am. Egypt, vol. iii. p. 87.
^''S King, Gnostics, pp. 65, 66.