Pretty sure I’ve seen this as a tattoo the last time I went peoplewatching at Lolla.
The Louvre says these snakes represent an early form of Serapis, and a quick google tells me that he’s complicated.
[ID: A circular piece of stone, carved with an inscription and two figures; the figures are snakes, their tails knotted together, but they have human heads with beards and crowns, one solar, one papyrus.]
A lunar creature; the humid principle; believed to be tongueless and subsist on dew, the lizard was a symbol of silence.
In Egyptian and Greek symbolism, it represented divine wisdom and good fortune and was an attribute of Serapis and Hermes; in Zoroastrianism it was a symbol of Ahriman and evil.
In Christianity it is also evil and the Devil. The lizard is an attribute of Sabazios and usually appears on the hand of Sabazios.
In Roman mythology it was supposed to sleep through the winter and so symbolized death and resurrection. The lizard Tarrotarro is an aboriginal Australian culture hero.
[Source: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper]
Its discoverer dated it to the 2nd-century BCE, which makes it the oldest of the known Isis aretalogies. Though it is also the most different of the aretalogies, and aims to interpret Isis to Greeks by connecting Her to Demeter, Athens, and Eleusis, scholar Louis Zabkar, who has studied the hymns to Isis at Philae as well as the aretalogies, is convinced that the original text on which this hymn is based is indeed Egyptian.
An emissary of the Apis Bull has heard your call. He comes forth as the Herald of Ptah to grant you creativity, as the Son of Hathor to lend you strength, as Serapis to provide prosperity. In whatever name you call Him, the Apis Bull comes.
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The Apis bull is a complex figure whose worship extends centuries, from the First Dynasty in Ancient Egypt to 400 CE in the Roman Empire. He can be interpreted as a herald, intermediary, or manifestation of Ptah or Osiris; as the son of Hathor (and therefore can be shown with the solar disc and horns); and through additional syncretism in the Roman Empire also becomes the god Serapis. Sacred bulls kept in temples were treated with the utmost reverence and received full burial honors. His history is worth digging into!
An emissary of the Apis Bull has heard your call. He comes forth as the Herald of Ptah to grant you creativity, as the Son of Hathor to lend you strength, as Serapis to provide prosperity. In whatever name you call Him, the Apis Bull comes.
—
The Apis bull is a complex figure whose worship extends centuries, from the First Dynasty in Ancient Egypt to 400 CE in the Roman Empire. He can be interpreted as a herald, intermediary, or manifestation of Ptah or Osiris; as the son of Hathor (and therefore can be shown with the solar disc and horns); and through additional syncretism in the Roman Empire also becomes the god Serapis. Sacred bulls kept in temples were treated with the utmost reverence and received full burial honors. His history is worth digging into!
The Engagement of Captain Pearson in His Majesty’s ship Serapis, with Paul Jones of the American Ship of War called the Bon Homme Richard in which Action the former [was captured] while the Countess of Scarborough was also captured by the Pallasfrigate.
Original copper plate engraving by Robert Collier after a drawing by William Hamilton; published by Alexander Hogg, 1782.
“Many scholars today working on the connections between white supremacism and and classical studies, such as Dani Bostick, have demonstrated that many modern readers want to see a direct line between white culture and the ancient Greeks and Romans. Our inability to see Isis and Sarapis, even when they are right in front of us, comes from the other side of the same coin. The idea of someone quintessentially Greek like Herodes Atticus worshipping the Egyptian gods flies in the face of our modern ideas and narrow definitions of Greekness.”
