SERAPEUM AND PUMPED COLUMN

The construction of the Temple of Serapis and the library annex that was attached to it date back to Ptolemy III Evergetos, who reigned from 246 to 221, i.e. some fifty years after the construction of the Museum. Ptolemy I had already had a first temple erected on the same site called Rhakotis, dedicated to the new god Serapis, synchretism of Osiris-Apis and Zeus, represented in the form of a bull or a mature, bearded man, wearing a calathos, whose shape is reminiscent of a grainy measure. Ptolemy V also built a temple of reduced dimensions for Harpocrates, the new Horus represented as a child wearing a mat and sucking one of his thumbs. The column improperly called Pompey's column was erected by Emperor Diocletian in 298. The site was destroyed in 391 by the Christians in application of Theodosius' edict forbidding paganism.

Nowadays, the site consists of the remains of the temple of Serapis, of which only the foundations can be found, of the entrance to the tomb of the bull Apis, of which a monumental statue found in situ in the Greco-Roman Museum (closed for restoration) can be seen, of a nilometer which allowed the floods of the Nile to be measured (and the tax to be fixed) and of Diocletian's column, almost 27 m high, carved from a single block of red granite from Aswan. Impressive in size, the column is remarkable for the purity of its lines and its Corinthian capital.