The Serapeum of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom was an ancient Greek temple built by Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned 246–222 BC) and dedicated to Serapis, who was made the protector of Alexandria. There are also signs of Harpocrates. It has been referred to as the daughter of the Library of Alexandria. The site has been heavily plundered.
The site is located on a rocky plateau, overlooking land and sea. By all detailed accounts, the Serapeum was the largest and most magnificent of all temples in the Greek quarter of Alexandria.
Besides the image of the god, the temple precinct housed an offshoot collection of the great Library of Alexandria. The geographer Strabo tells that this stood in the west of the city.
Nothing now remains above ground, except the enormous Pompey's Pillar. According to Rowe and Rees 1956, accounts of Serapeum's still standing buildings they saw there have been left by Aphthonius, the Greek rhetorician of Antioch "who visited it about A.D. 315", and Rufinus, "a Christian who assisted at the destruction of [it] during the end of the fourth century"; the Pillar marks the "Acropolis" of the Serapeum in the account by Aphthonius, that is, "the upper part of the great Serapeum area".
The original elaborate temple of that name was located on the west bank of the Nile near á¹¢aqqarah and originated as a monument to the deceased Apis bulls, sacred animals of the god Ptah. Though the area was used as a cemetery for the bulls as early as 1400 BC, it was Ramses II (1279–13 BC) who designed a main gallery and subsidiary chambers (repeatedly enlarged by succeeding kings) to serve as a catacomb for the deceased Apis bulls who, in death, became assimilated to the god Osiris as Osiris-Apis. The Greeks living near á¹¢aqqarah worshiped this god as Osorapis, which under the Ptolemaic dynasty became Serapis, and the temple was thereafter called the Serapeum.
The ruins of the Serapeum at á¹¢aqqarah were first discovered in 1850 by Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist. The subterranean chambers, which he entered in 1851, yielded the burials of 64 Apis bulls, together with thousands of inscribed objects. A second area of the Serapeum underwent excavation beginning in the 1980s.
Another important Serapeum was built at Alexandria, the new Ptolemaic capital. When Ptolemy I Soter (reigned 305–284 BC) wanted to select an official god for Egypt, he chose Serapis, ordering his architect Parmeniscus to design what became one of the largest and best known of the god’s temples. There Serapis was worshiped in a purely Greek ritual until AD 391, when the Serapeum was destroyed by the patriarch Theophilus and his followers. In Roman times other Serapeums were constructed throughout the empire.