INTRODUCTION
intro
Plutarch’s knowledge of Egyptology was not profound. It is true that he once visited Egypt, Moralia, 678 c. but how long he stayed and how much he learned we have no means of knowing. It is most likely that his treatise represents the knowledge current in his day, derived, no doubt, from two sources: books and priests. The gods of Egypt had early found a welcome in other lands, in Syria and Asia Minor, and later in Greece and Rome. That the worship of Isis had been introduced into Greece before 330 b.c. is certain from an inscription found in the Peiraeus (I.G. II.¹ 168, or II.² 337; Dittenberger, Sylloge³ , 280, or 551²), in which the merchants from Citium ask permission to found a shrine of Aphrodite on the same terms as those on which the Egyptians had founded a shrine of Isis. In Delos there was a shrine of the Egyptian gods, and in Plutarch’s own town they must have been honoured, for there have been found two dedications to Serapis, Isis, and Anubis, Cf. Collitz, Sammlung der griechischen Dialektinschriften, vol. i. pp. 149-155. as well as numerous inscriptions recording the manumission of slaves, which in Greece was commonly accomplished by dedicating them to a god, who, in these inscriptions, is Serapis (Sarapis). An idea of the widespread worship of Egyptian gods in Greek lands may be obtained from Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und romischen Mythologie, vol. ii. pp. 379-392, where the cults of Isis are listed.
