The Hellenistic-Egyptian god Serapis and his attributes.

Serapis (Σέραπις) or Sarapis (Σάραπις) is a Graeco-Egyptian god. Serapis was devised during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography from a great many cults, signifying both abundance and resurrection. His cultus was spread as a matter of deliberate policy by the Ptolemaic kings, who also built a splendid Serapeum in Alexandria. Serapis continued to increase in popularity during the Roman period, often replacing Osiris as the consort of Isis in non-Egyptian temples. The destruction of the Serapeum by a mob led by the Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria in 389 is one of the key events in the downfall of ancient paganism, and the cult ceased to exist with the abolition of paganism in 391 AD.

About the god[link]

"Serapis" is the only form used in Latin,^[1] but both Ancient Greek: Σάραπις Sárapis and Ancient Greek: Σέραπις Sérapis appear in Greek.

His most renowned temple was the Serapeum of Alexandria.^[2] Under Ptolemy Soter, efforts were made to integrate Egyptian religion with that of their Hellenic rulers. Ptolemy's policy was to find a deity that should win the reverence alike of both groups, despite the curses of the Egyptian priests against the gods of the previous foreign rulers (i.e Set who was lauded by the Hyksos). Alexander the Great had attempted to use Amun for this purpose, but he was more prominent in Upper Egypt, and not as popular with those in Lower Egypt, where the Greeks had stronger influence. The Greeks had little respect for animal-headed figures, and so a Greek-style anthropomorphic statue was chosen as the idol, and proclaimed as the equivalent of the highly popular Apis.^[3] It was named Aser-hapi (i.e. Osiris-Apis), which became Serapis, and was said to be Osiris in full, rather than just his Ka (life force).

History[link]

The earliest mention of a Serapis is in the disputed death scene of Alexander (323 BC).^[4] Here, Serapis has a temple at Babylon, and is of such importance that he alone is named as being consulted on behalf of the dying king. His presence in Babylon would radically alter perceptions of the mythologies of this era, though fortunately it has been discovered that the unconnected Babylonian god Ea (Enki) was titled Serapsi, meaning 'king of the deep', and it is possible this Serapis is the one referred to in the diaries. The significance of this Serapsi in the Hellenic psyche, due to its involvement in Alexander's death, may have also contributed to the choice of Osiris-Apis as the chief Ptolemaic god.

According to Plutarch, Ptolemy stole the cult statue from Sinope, having been instructed in a dream by the "unknown god" to bring the statue to Alexandria, where the statue was pronounced to be Serapis by two religious experts. One of the experts was of the Eumolpidae, the ancient family from whose members the hierophant of the Eleusinian Mysteries had been chosen since before history, and the other was the scholarly Egyptian priest Manetho, which gave weight to the judgement both for the Egyptians and the Greeks.

Plutarch may not be correct, however, as some Egyptologists allege that the Sinope in the tale is really the hill of Sinopeion, a name given to the site of the already existing Serapeum at Memphis. Also, according to Tacitus, Serapis (i.e., Apis explicitly identified as Osiris in full) had been the god of the village of Rhakotis before it expanded into the great capital of Alexandria.

High Clerk in the Cult of Serapis, Altes Museum, Berlin

The statue suitably depicted a figure resembling Hades or Pluto, both being kings of the Greek underworld, and was shown enthroned with the modius, a basket/grain-measure, on his head, since it was a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. He also held a sceptre in his hand indicating his rulership, with Cerberus, gatekeeper of the underworld, resting at his feet, and it also had what appeared to be a serpent at its base, fitting the Egyptian symbol of rulership, the uraeus.

With his (i.e. Osiris's) wife Isis, and their son Horus (in the form of Harpocrates), Serapis won an important place in the Greek world,^[5] reaching Ancient Rome, with Anubis being identified as Cerberus. In Rome, Serapis was worshiped in the Iseum Campense, the sanctuary of the goddess Isis located in the Campus Martius and built during the Second Triumvirate. The Roman cults of Isis and Serapis gained in popularity late in the 1st century thanks to the god's role in the miracles that the imperial usurper Vespasian experienced in the city of Alexandria, where he stayed prior to his return to Rome as emperor in 70 AD. From the Flavian Dynasty on, Serapis sometimes appeared on imperial coinage with the reigning emperor. The great cult survived until 385, when a Christian mob destroyed the Serapeum of Alexandria, and subsequently the cult was forbidden by the Theodosian decree.

The Alexandrians were syncretic, and a letter inserted in the Augustan History, ascribed to the Emperor Hadrian, refers to this indifference:

The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumour. There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Christ.^[6]

Gallery[link]

• 

  Mouldmade lamp with a bust of Serapis, flanked by a crescent moon and star. Roman, made in Ephesus 100-150. Said to be from Egypt. British Museum

• 

  Hellenistic-Roman terracotta head of Serapis, iconographically close to Zeus (Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich)

• 

  Statuette of Serapis from Begram, Afghanistan

• 

  Head of Sarapis (150-200 CE),

See also[link]

• Serapeum
• Serapis Bey, the Ascended Master in charge of the Ascension Temple

Notes[link]

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Serapis

• E. R. Bevan: The House of Ptolemy, Chapter. II
• James Grout: "Temple of Serapis", part of the Encyclopædia Romana
• "Immoralities of the Gods: Of the fugitive Serapis chased from Sinope to Alexandria", by Theophilus of Antioch
• "Greco-Egyptian Mythology: The Alexandrian Synthesis"

Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein ( /ˈɡiːn/; August 27, 1906^[1] – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. After police found body parts in his house in 1957, Gein confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan, in 1954; and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in 1957.

Initially found unfit to stand trial, following confinement in a mental health facility he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital. The body of Bernice Worden was found in Gein's shed; her head and the head of Mary Hogan were found inside his house. Robert H. Gollmar, the judge in the Gein case, wrote: "Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder — that of Mrs. Worden."^[2] With fewer than three murders attributed to him, Gein does not meet the traditional definition of a serial killer.^[3] His case influenced the creation of several fictional serial killers, including Norman Bates from Psycho, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs.

Biography[link]

Childhood[link]

Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, George Philip Gein (1873–1940) and Augusta Wilhelmine (Lehrke) Gein (1878–1945), both natives of Wisconsin, had two sons: Henry George Gein (1901–1944), and his younger brother, Edward Theodore Gein. Augusta despised her husband, but the marriage persisted because of the family's religious belief against divorce. Augusta Gein operated a small grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which then became the Gein family's permanent home.^[4]

Augusta Gein moved to this location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons.^[4] Edward Gein left the premises only to go to school. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta Gein, a fervent Lutheran, preached to her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking, and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were prostitutes and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder, and divine retribution.^[5]

A shy, effeminate boy, the younger Gein became a target for bullies. Classmates and teachers recalled off-putting mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. To make matters worse, his mother punished him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.^[6]

Gein tried to make his mother happy, but she was rarely pleased with her boys; she often abused them, believing that they were destined to become failures like their father. During their teens and throughout their early adulthood, the boys remained detached from people outside of their farmstead, and so had only each other for company.^[4]

Deaths of family members[link]

After George Gein died of a heart attack in 1940, the Gein brothers began working at odd jobs to help with expenses. Both brothers were considered reliable and honest by residents of the community. While both worked as handymen, Ed Gein also frequently babysat for neighbors. He enjoyed babysitting, seeming to relate more easily to children than adults. As he matured, Henry Gein began to reject his mother's view of the world and worried about his brother's attachment to her. He spoke ill of her around his brother, who responded with shock and hurt.^[7][8]

On May 16, 1944 his brother Henry decided to burn off a marsh on the property.^[9] The burn off escaped control and the local fire department was called to extinguish the fire and protect the family farm from flames. At day's end, with the fire under control, the men returned to their homes, at which time it was discovered that Henry had not come in with the others. A searching party, with lanterns and flashlights, searched the burned over area and in the evening, several hours after the search began, found the dead body of Henry Gein lying face down.^[10] Apparently the man had been dead for some time when found, and it appeared that death was result of a heart attack, since he had not been burned or otherwise injured.^[10] It was later reported, and possibly embellished in the Ed Gein biography, "Deviant" by Harold Schechter, that Henry had bruises on his head.^[7][11] The police dismissed the possibility of foul play and the county coroner later officially listed asphyxiation as the cause of death. Although some investigators suspected that Ed Gein killed his brother, no charges were filed against him.^[7][11]

After his brother's death, Gein lived alone with his mother, who died on December 29, 1945, following a series of strokes. Gein was devastated by her death; in the words of author Harold Schechter, he had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."^[11]

Gein remained on the farm, supporting himself with earnings from odd jobs. He boarded up rooms used by his mother, including the upstairs, downstairs parlor, and living room, leaving them untouched. He lived in a small room next to the kitchen. Gein became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories.^[7]

Arrest[link]

On November 16, 1957, Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared and police had reason to suspect Gein. Worden's son told investigators that Gein had been in the store the evening before the disappearance, saying he would return the following morning for a gallon of anti-freeze. A sales slip for a gallon of anti-freeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning she disappeared.^[12] Upon searching Gein's property, investigators discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down by ropes at her wrists, with a crossbar at her ankles. The torso was "dressed out" like that of a deer.^[13] She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, and the mutilations were made after death.^{[citation needed]}

Searching the house, authorities found:^[14]

• Four noses
• Whole human bones and fragments^[15]
• Nine masks of human skin^[16]
• Bowls made from human skulls
• Ten female heads with the tops sawn off
• Human skin covering several chair seats
• Mary Hogan's head in a paper bag^[17]
• Bernice Worden's head in a burlap sack^[18]
• Nine vulvae in a shoe box^[19]
• A belt made from female human nipples^[20]
• Skulls on his bedposts
• A pair of lips on a draw string for a window-shade
• A lampshade made from the skin from a human face

These artifacts were photographed at the crime lab and then were properly destroyed.^[21]

When questioned, Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952,^[22] he made as many as 40 nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state. On about 30 of those visits, he said he came out of the daze while in the cemetery, left the grave in good order, and returned home empty handed.^[23] On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother^[24] and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia. Gein admitted robbing nine graves, leading investigators to their locations. Because authorities were uncertain as to whether the slight Gein was capable of single-handedly digging up a grave in a single evening, they exhumed two of the graves and found them empty, thus apparently corroborating Gein's confession.^[25][26]

Shortly after his mother's death, Gein decided he wanted a sex change and began to create a "woman suit" so he could pretend to be a female.^[14] Gein's practice of donning the tanned skins of women was described as an "insane transvestite ritual".^[27] Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining: "They smelled too bad."^[27] During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, a tavern operator missing since 1954.^{[citation needed]}

A 16-year-old youth whose parents were friends of Gein and who attended ball games and movies with him reported that he was aware of the shrunken heads, which Gein had described as relics from the Philippines sent by a cousin who had served in World War II.^[28] Upon investigation by the police, these were determined to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from corpses and used as masks by Gein.^{[citation needed]}

Waushara County sheriff Art Schley reportedly physically assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall; as a result, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible.^[11] Schley died of a heart attack in December 1968, at age 43, only a month after testifying at Gein's trial. Many who knew him said he was traumatized by the horror of Gein's crime and that this, along with the fear of having to testify (especially about assaulting Gein), led to his death. One of his friends said: "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him."^[11]

Trial[link]

On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.^[29] Found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial, Gein was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now the Dodge Correctional Institution), a maximum-security facility in Waupun, Wisconsin, and later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial. The trial began on November 14, 1968, lasting one week. He was found guilty of first-degree murder by Judge Robert H. Gollmar, but because he was found to be legally insane, he spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.^[30][31]

Aftermath[link]

Gein's house and property were scheduled to be auctioned March 30, 1958, amid rumors the house was to become a tourist attraction. On March 27, the house was destroyed by fire. Arson was suspected, but the cause of the blaze was never officially solved.^[32] When Gein learned of the incident while in detention, he shrugged and said, "Just as well."^[33] Gein's car, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at the public auction for $760 to carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons.^[34] Gibbons later charged carnival goers 25¢ admission to see it.^[35]

Death[link]

On July 26, 1984, Gein died of respiratory failure at the age of 77 in Stovall Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute.^[11] His grave site in the Plainfield cemetery was frequently vandalized over the years; souvenir seekers chipped off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is now in a museum in Waushara County.^[36]

Popular culture[link]

The story of Ed Gein has had a lasting impact on Western popular culture as evidenced by its numerous appearances in movies, music and literature. In the movie American Psycho (2000), a reference to Ed Gein is made during a conversation between protagonist Patrick Bateman and his colleagues, in which Bateman cites a quote from Gein that states: "When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her, and be real nice and sweet and treat her right." When asked what the other part of Ed thought, Bateman replies, chuckling: "What her head would look like on a stick."

Gein's story was adapted into a number of movies, including Deranged (1974), In the Light of the Moon (2000) released in the U.S. as Ed Gein (2001), and Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007). Gein served as a model for several book and film characters, most notably such fictional serial killers as Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs).^[33]

At the time, the news reports of Gein's crimes spawned a subgenre of black humor.^[37] Since the 1950s, Gein has frequently been exploited in transgressive art or shock rock, often with no connection to his life or crimes beyond the shock value of his name. Examples of this include the song titled "Dead Skin Mask" from the band Slayer's album Seasons in the Abyss .^[38] Ed Gein: The Musical premiered on January 2, 2010 in Menasha, Wisconsin.^[39][40]

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Crime Library: Ed Gein
• Twisted Minds: Ed Gein
• Prairie Ghosts: Ed Gein