According to Plutarch, Ptolemy stole the cult statue from Sinope, having been instructed in a dream by the "unknown god" to bring the statue to Alexandria, where the statue was pronounced to be Serapis by two religious experts.
Sinope |
The most considerable towns of the interior were Gangra – in ancient times the capital of the Paphlagonian kings, afterwards called Germanicopolis, situated near the frontier of Galatia – and Pompeiopolis, in the valley of the Amnias river, near extensive mines of the mineral called by Strabo sandarake (red arsenic or arsenic sulfide), largely exported from Sinope.
Diogenes and Alexander (La rencontre d'Alexandre et de Diogène de Sinope), a Puget bas relief