PLATE II
1. Greek Terra-Cotta of the Young
Horus Floating in his Boat
The infant god has his finger raised to his lips as a conventional sign of childhood, though later this was misinterpreted as an admonition to maintain silence before divine mysteries. Cf. pp. 94, 243.
2. Bês in the Armour of a Roman Soldier
The divinity here appears in an apotropaic function. A primitive god, and long obscure, he finally rose to such popularity that representations of him even influenced Classical conceptions of Silenus and the Satyrs. See pp. 61-64.
3. Zeus-Serapis
From a local divinity at Ded, in the Delta, Osiris became a god of changing nature in the widest sense. Among his many identifications was that with the bull Apis, called Hap in Egyptian; and hence arose Osor-hap, the Serapis of the Greeks. When the cult of Serapis became popular in the declining days of Classical religion, Serapis was naturally equated with the Greek Zeus as all-god and was represented in Classical style. Cf. pp. 92-93, 98, 239-40, 242-43.
