463 



SEQUESTRATION. 



SERAPEUH. 



451 



the serjeant-at-arms, or escaping from custody, or disobeying an order 

 of tbe court to pay money. 



Sequestration also may be issued from the Courts of Common 

 Law against a corporation, to compel obedience to a mandamus or 

 injunction. 



SEQUESTRATION (Scotland). [BANKRUPT LAWS OF SCOTLAND.] 



SKQUIN. [MOSEY.] 



SERA'GLIO, properly teral, the palace of the Sultan of Turkey; 

 ill this sense the word is also applied to the houses of foreign 

 ambassadors resident at his court. The serai of Constantinople stands 

 in a beautiful situation, on a head of land projecting into the sea, 

 formerly called Chrysoceras, or the Horn of Gold, now Seraglio Point. 

 The walls embrace a circuit of about three miles. Its outward appear- 

 ance is not imposing, though its extent is large. The principal 

 entrance, a large pavilion, which looks more like a guard-house than 

 the entrance to a palace, is always guarded by cupidj'a, officers of 

 the seraglio ; but this is the Porte, from which the title of the Sublime 

 Porte has arisen. That part of the building which is occupied by the 

 women of the sultan has been improperly called seraglio, and hence 

 the word has become synonymous with harem, an Arabic word, mean- 

 ing " sacred spot," or that part of the house where the women and 

 daughters of the Mohammedans reside. 



SERAI, a large building for the accommodation of travellers, com- 

 mon in Eastern countries. The word is Persian, and means in that 

 language, " a palace, the king's court, a large edifice ; " hence kardi'dn- 

 ') corruption cararaniarie, that is, place of rest for caravans. 

 In Turkey these buildings are generally called khans, from kltdn, 

 another Persian word, which has a similar meaning. In Tartar}- and 

 India they are simply called urali. The erection of these buildings is 

 considered highly meritorious by Hindus as well as Mohammedans, 

 who frequently endow them with rente for their support. [SERAGLIO.] 



SERALBUMEN. [OVALBUMEX.] 



SKIIAI'KUM, the name given to two celebrated Egyptian temples, 

 one at Alexandria, the other at Memphis, dedicated to tbe god Serapia. 

 There was also a temple of the same name at Babylon, where the 

 friends of Alexander the Great wished to transport him during his last 

 illness (Arrian, ' Anab.,' vii. 56.) The temple of Serapis at Alexandria 

 was preceded by^an older one dedicated at Khacotis. ( Jul. Valer., ' Alex. 

 Ort.,' L xxxi.) All these temples derived their name from the god 

 Serapis, who was affirmed by Manetho to be Pluto, or the Jupiter of 

 Sinope. (Plutarch, ' Isid and Osirid,' xxxvii.) Of the many etymo- 

 logies proposed for the name of the god, that of St. Clement of 

 Alexandria i now recognised to be the correct one, Serapis being 

 composed of two words signifying the Osiris, or deceased Apis, from 

 the name of Osiris having been applied to all mortals after death, 

 and to the bull considered as a demigod. Recent discoveries at 

 Memphis have shown that the Serapeum was the cemetery of the Apis, 

 and close to the Apeum where the bull dwelt during his life. The 

 A I- i mi was established here after the time of tfa Psammetichi, where 

 it still existed in the days of Herodotus (ii. 21). But the Serapeum 

 or mortuary temple of the Apis was founded by Shaemgam, the son of 

 Hameses II.. who removed thither the tomb of the sacred bull. This 

 temple was discovered by M. Uariette, at the west end of a droinos of 

 sphinxes lying to the north of the Pyramid* of Sakkar*. It seems to 

 i-i-u enlarged and repaired till the days of Neththerhebi or 

 ; ebes I., of the 30th dynasty. Another temple, lying on the east 

 end of the same dromos, seems to have been that erected in Ptolemaic 

 times, and continued to be used for the Apis and the worship of 

 Serapis till the days of the Emperor Julian, and even later. This 

 Serapeum at Memphis was called the Great, to distinguish it from 

 that f Alexandria, which was suruamed " the most illustrious." It 

 comprised, or was a portion of, a group of buildings, consisting of the 

 Astarteum, dedicated to Astarte ; the Anubeum, to Anubis ; the 

 Asclepeum, or Temple of ..Etculapius, in which libations were daily 

 offered ; the dwellings of the hierarchy ; and the apartments or hospital 

 <>f the sick who flocked to the temple for the sake of the cure of their 

 maladies, which was supposed to be effected through 'the dreams 

 accorded by the god during their sleep in the sacred edifice. One 

 hundred and forty-nix papyri discovered in the adjacent ruins, and now 

 dispersed through tbe museums of Europe, relating to the quarrels 

 and litigations of the functionaries of the temple, hare thrown great 

 light on its administration. They all date from the 18th to the 24th 

 year of Ptolemy Philometor, and describe the temple as connected by a 

 dromos of sphinxes with the city of Memphis, and which had not then, 

 as in the dayi of Strabo, been buried iu the sand. (Strabo, xvii. 

 807, c.) The temple was under the direction of prefect*, delegate*, 

 vicars, Biibadmiuietrators, and storekeepers, and two female priestesses 

 called Didymi, or " twins," whose office wag to serve ^tsculapius and 

 U, and a peculiar class of bierodules, who voluntarily dedicated 

 themselves to tbe service of the gods, and lived in celibacy and Bcchf- 

 sion within the precincts. These j veil no support from the 



ie of the temple, and were either maintained by their families 

 alms of visitors to the sacred edifice. Tln-y had in their hands 

 the charge of affairs, but could not go beyond the precincts, and lived 

 to all intents a cloistered or monastic life. This institution is men- 

 tioned as lato as Antoninus Pius, and is evidently that from which 

 rnouachism has been borrowed. (Peyron, B., ' Papiri Greci,' p. H.) 

 There were also many officers attached to the worship of the Apis, who 



had two shrines, into which he entered at pleasure, and from which 

 passage augury was taken by the priests. The sacred bull was attended 

 by a herdsman while living, and an entaphiastes or embalmer when 

 dead. (Peyron, B., ' Papiri Greci,' p. 8.) His mother also participated 

 iu his honours, and had a shrine assigned her iu the Apeum. Extra- 

 ordinary care and vast sums were expended both by native and Greek 

 monarchs in embellishing these shrines ; and if the old capital of 

 Memphis was comparatively neglected during the sway of the great 

 Theban dynasties, this was amply compensated by the magnificent 

 donations of the later Saitic dynasty and the Ptolemies. Apis 

 is mentioned on monuments of the 4th dynasty, and his ehrine 

 must have been established as early as the building of the oldest 

 Pyramids. 



The remains of this edifice were discovered in the plains of Sakkara, 

 in 1 850 by M. Mariette, then an employe" of the Louvre, who had been 

 sent to Egypt to collect Coptic manuscripts for the French government, 

 where he first found the dromos of sphinxes connecting the temples. 

 This excavation was a work of great labour, the dromos having been 

 made through the ancient cemetery of Sakkara, and curved to avoid 

 injuring the tombs, and partly buried under a great depth of sand; 

 after excavating a length of 7000 feet and uncovering 141 sphinxes, 

 he discovered at the end of the avenue a semicircle ornamented with 

 statues of the sages, poets, and philosophers of ancient Greece, supposed 

 to have formed part of the library of the Serapeum. Between this 

 semicircle and the two last sphinxes he found a transverse avenue, 

 the right branch of which led to a temple erected to Apis by the 

 monarch Nect&nebes, or Neththerhebi ; the left branch, paved with large 

 stones, led to the Serapeum itself. The dromos was about 360 fet iu 

 length, flanked on each side by a low wall, divided on the left side 

 about the middle by a small Greek building having before it a uos in 

 which was a statue of Apis, probably that described by Strabo. On 

 each side of the temple and on the wall, were allegorical figures of boys 

 riding on chimeras and animals, and at the end of the dromos were 

 the pylons or gateways of the Serapeum. 



The wall, built in the reign of Neththerhebi, was covered with 

 sepulchral altars, and 428 small bronze votive figures of deities were 

 discovered in a niche. At this stage, owing to difficulties with the 

 Egyptian government, the excavations were stopped in 1851, and not 

 resumed till the spring of 1852. In November of 1851, the first tombs 

 of the Apis were discovered, 640 sepulchral tablets, five entrances, and 

 various small objects. This great subterraneous cemetery divided 

 itself into two parts, the first of which had its entrance at the south 

 end, and went in a northern direction forming a vaulted gallery like 

 a tunnel, having st its side about 20 chambers, the oldest of the 

 age of Rameses II., and the most recent of that of Psammetichus I. 

 During this period the remains of 24 Apis mummies showed that 

 this number of generations of cattle had lived and died during 

 that chronological period. The other part of the cemetery was a 

 soiiterraiu divided into a considerable number of galleries, com- 

 menced in the 52nd year of Psammefcichus I., and continued till the 

 commencement of the Roman Empire. The bull mummies of this 

 division were deposited in gigantic monolith sarcophagi of Syenitic 

 granite, transported from the quarries above the first cataract. These 

 sarcophagi ranged from 11 to 12 feet high, 14 to 15 feet long, and 

 weighed 6500 kilogrammes ; or above 64 tons, 24 of them were found in 

 the 40 chambers of this tunnel. The tablets were not fixed to the inner 

 wall* but to the lintels of the doors, and were chiefly inscribed in 

 demotic characters, and the most important one was placed in tho 

 midst of the wall which closed the door of the chamber, containing 

 the dates of the birth, enthronement, death, and burial of the Apis. 

 Only four of these sarcophagi had inscriptions, one bore the date of 

 the 2nd year of Khabash, a Persian king, supposed to be later than 

 Darius ; another that of the reign of Cambyses ; a third in that of 

 Amasis II. ; and the last that of Ptolemy. The result of these researches 

 showed that the bull, said to have been stabbed by Cambysea, sur- 

 vived till the reign of Darius. Among the mummies of the Apis were 

 found two others of men, evidently of the highest rank, who had been 

 buried with the sacred bulls. The bulls which died from the com- 

 mencement of the reign of Amenophis III. to the middle of that of 

 Rameees II., had a mortuary chapel with four columns erected above 

 the tomb, which was a chamber with a flat roof hollowed in the solid 

 rock below, and the votive tablets of the adorers of the deceased bull 

 were built into the stylobate of the mortuary chapel. The bull was 

 treated as a deceased human being, and the sarcophagi were accom- 

 panied by sepulchral vases, and the visitors to the tomb deposited the 

 usual sepulchral figures offered to the dead ; but at the later period of 

 the age of Rameses the tombs consisted of chambers on each side of 

 the gallery, with the votive tablets placed in the gallery; and the 

 sepulchral figures, deposited in the cases, were strewn along the floor, 

 or inserted into niches in the wall. After the 53rd year of Psam- 

 metichus II., the chambers became more magnificent, being above 

 30 feet high, with vaulted roofs of white limestone, and tho walls 

 faced with stone from the Tourah quarries ; the sarcophagi were of tho 

 finest red Syenite. At tho period of the 30th dynasty the tablets 

 were not allowed to be placed inside the tomb, but were restricted to 

 the entrance, and the walls of the roads conducting to the tomb. 

 After the epoch of Darius, the tombs are far less magnificent. The 

 Apis of Cambyses is deposited in the vestibule of that which died in 



