Sometimes in the reliefs of the “funeral banquet” the dead are seen wearing on their head the bushel (_modius_) of Serapis, with whom, after a virtuous life, they have been identified. This indicates a confusion, to which much other testimony bears witness, between the Bacchic mysteries and the cult of the Alexandrian god.[509] Serapis is the great master of the feast (συμποσιάρχης),[510] the host who must in the nether world entertain those faithful to him. Thus the eschatological beliefs of the Nile Valley mingled with those of Greece. In the country of burning sun, where a straying traveller runs the risk of dying of thirst on the arid stretches of sand, the hope expressed above all others for him who accomplishes the great pilgrimage to the abode of the infernal divinities, is that he may find wherewith to quench his consuming thirst. “May Osiris give thee fresh water” is a wish which the votaries of the Egyptian god often inscribed on their tombs. Thus the repast in the other world was to be above all a refreshment (_refrigerium_). The word passed into Christian language to denote both earthly “_agape_” or sacred meal and the bliss of the other world, and even today the Roman Church prays for the spiritual “refreshment” of the dead.[511] We touch here on a question which is not yet completely elucidated, that of the relation established between the funeral banquet and the salvation of those who took part in it. In Rome from the end of the Republic onwards this banquet, amid the general decline of faith in immortality, was increasingly detached from the tomb and became a guild or domestic ceremony. The tendency was to reduce it to the repast of a family or confraternity, to the perpetuation among men of the memory of him whose features were preserved by a statue or picture. But the funeral cult acquired new meaning with the spread of Oriental religions. It did not cease to be useful to the dead who were its object, to whose subsistence in the beyond and safe arrival in the Elysian Fields it was still thought to be necessary. The offerings of the living sustained them on their dangerous and hard journey thither; the food and drink restored them on the long road they had to travel before they reached the place of everlasting refreshment. But the funeral repast was also salutary to those who offered it, and not only because it ensured to them the good will of a spirit or demon capable of protecting them. This banquet, at which wine flowed profusely, was like the “orgies” of the Bacchic and Oriental mysteries, and the resemblance is partly explained by an identity of kind.