Tom Brennan

Season: 1 & 5, Episodes: 2, Faction: N/A

Overview

Tom Brennan was Kate’s childhood sweetheart. Many years later he had a baby named Connor with his wife, Rachel. He became a doctor in St. Francis Hospital in Iowa, where he scheduled a fake MRI for Kate’s mother Diane Janssen so that Kate could see her one last time before she dies. Following this, Tom was accidentally killed by a stray bullet to the head while driving with Kate, who was fleeing the police.

Fertility (Vegetation)

Fertility (Earth)

Healing

Fate

Underworld

Childhood

5×16 – The Incident, Part 1

At some point in his youth, Tom accompanied his childhood friend, Kate, to a general store in town. He was in possession of his toy airplane that he received on his first flight by himself. Although intially apprehensive, he served as lookout for Kate while she attempted to steal a lunchbox, but she was later caught. (“The Incident, Part 1”)

On the 15th August 1989, he and Kate buried a time capsule. Inside the time capsule were a number of childhood objects, including a red baseball hat and Tom’s favorite toy airplane. They also recorded a tape recording, which they would later play in the car. Young Tom and Kate commented on how they will one day be married and have 9 kids.

Reuniting with Kate

1×22 – Born to Run

Many years later, Tom married and had a son named Connor. He also became a doctor in St. Francis Hospital in Iowa.

In 2002, as Tom left the hospital and got into his car, he was surprised by Kate who was hiding in the back. Kate had been visiting the hospital to visit her dying mother, Diane. She told him that Diane was dying of cancer, and that she needed his help.

At Tom’s house, Kate looked at Tom’s family photos as Tom spoke to someone on the phone about arranging an MRI scan for Kate’s mother. After finishing his phone call, Tom talked about his son and wife, and Kate seemed upset at the thought that Tom was with someone. He promised that Diane will get a scan in the next few hours, so they had a little time to kill until then. In the moments that followed, Kate comments about whether “it’s still there.” Though Tom was reluctant, Kate insisted that they may never have this opportunity again.

The pair drove out to a bare cattle field, with a huge tree engulfing the landscape. Here, they began to dig up the time capsule they earlier buried. Kate pulled out the box, and inside the time capsule they found a red baseball cap, baseball and Tom’s favorite toy airplane. They also found a tape recording, which they played in the car. Recorded in 1989, young Tom and Kate comment on how they will be married when they find the capsule in the future, and also about running away together. During this, young Kate additionally mentioned that Tom “knows why” she always wants to run. The tape was stopped, and in that moment the two kissed. Pulling away, Kate apologized as Tom said they’d better get to the hospital.

The following day at the hospital, Kate’s mother called security when Kate visited her. She ran from the room, but was grabbed by a security guard, whom she dispatched by hitting with him with his own walkie. Tom found her, and the two headed for his car. The police, however, have already created a barricade to prevent her escaping. She shouted for Tom to get out of the car, but when he refused, she drove straight through, clipping the police car and experiencing heavy fire from the sheriff. Though they managed to escape, it was not without cost, as Kate realized that one of the sheriff’s bullets had hit and killed Tom. With little time, Kate was forced to run from the car, leaving both Tom and the toy airplane behind. (“Born to Run”)

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Related Character Images

Decoded Season 1 & 5 Characters

Kate Austen

Diane Janssen

Jacob

Key Episode(s) to Decoding the Character

1x22 "Born to Run"

5x16 "The Incident, Part 1"

(Sarapis) Serapis has presented a riddle for Egyptologists. His worship originated among the Ptolemies, the transplanted Macedonian dynasty that ruled Egypt from their capital at Alexandria in the wake of Egypt’s conquest by Alexander the Great, and was subsequently adopted and promoted by the emperors of Rome. But Serapis remained, paradoxically, an Egyptian God worshiped in the company of other Egyptian Gods from one end of the Roman Empire to the other, but almost entirely by non-Egyptians. As the consort of Isis, Serapis became a fixture of the international Isis cult. In this role, Serapis displaced Osiris for many foreign devotees. Serapis is depicted in fully Hellenistic style as a bearded, robust man enthroned with the sign of a modius, or grain measure, on his head. The grain measure symbolizes allotting the portion deserved. Serapis is a God of miracles, destiny, healing and the afterlife, often fused with the Greek God Zeus or the Roman God Jupiter, extending the notion of sovereignty to include dominion over fate. Occasionally, for reasons unknown, a bust of Serapis sits atop a colossal right foot. Serapis and Isis may also be depicted as two snakes.

It is generally thought that Serapis derives from the Egyptian Osiris-Apis, the Osirianized form of the Apis bull, but the situation is complicated. Greeks and Egyptians alike affiliated Serapis more and more with the native cults over time, and the identification of Serapis with Osiris-Apis was clearly an official one; hence a chapel of Serapis catering to Greek pilgrims was installed at Memphis within the temple complex of Osiris-Apis. The cults remained, however, as a practical matter, separate. The canonical account of the origin of Serapis is told by Plutarch in his On Isis and Osiris (28), which relates that Ptolemy Soter (323-282 BCE) saw in a dream a certain colossal statue, of which he had no prior knowledge, in Sinopê, a city on the southern coast of the Black Sea. The statue spoke to him, urging him to have it brought to Alexandria. Making inquiries, the king learned that such a statue did indeed exist in Sinopê. The statue having been obtained by whatever means, it was brought to Alexandria. This statue, according to Plutarch, showed the God accompanied by a Cerberus dog and a serpent, and was therefore identified as a statue of Pluto by experts Ptolemy consulted, but “took to itself the name which Pluto bears among the Egyptians, that of Serapis,” (362 A). However, Plutarch himself connects Serapis, not with Osiris-Apis, but with Osiris simply, stating that Osiris “received this appellation at the time when he changed his nature,” (362 B) that is, when he was resurrected. Thus Plutarch, although aware of much of the theology surrounding the Egyptian Apis cult—for instance, that “we must regard Apis as the bodily image of the soul of Osiris,” (362 D)—is seemingly either unaware of or unimpressed by a direct derivation of the name of Serapis from ‘Osiris-Apis’, and says that in his opinion, “if the name Serapis is Egyptian, it denotes cheerfulness and rejoicing, and I base this opinion on the fact that the Egyptians call their festival of rejoicing sairei,” (362 D) an etymology most likely spurious. Plutarch states as well that Serapis is “a God of all peoples in common, even as Osiris is; and this they who have participated in the holy rites well know,” (362 B).

The story placing the origins of Serapis in Sinopê, on the other hand, is by no means without support (see Stiehl 1963 27f). Perhaps most significantly, the philosopher Diogenes (404-323 BCE), a native of Sinopê, is quoted as having said, upon learning that the Athenians had given Alexander the Great the title of “Dionysus,” that “You might as well make me Serapis,” (Diogenes Laertius VI. 63). The obscurity surrounding the origins of Serapis is also indicative, however, of what is most distinctive about the God: Serapis is presented as a truly international deity. Aside from the question of his identity with Osiris or with the Osirianized form of the bull who is himself the living soul of Osiris on earth, Serapis expresses a universality implicit in the nature of Osiris all along insofar as the latter embodied what is essential to all mortals as such.

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Further Info

Simply put, Serapis (Sarapis, Zaparrus) was an invented god. He was a composite of several Egyptian and Hellenistic deities who was introduced to the world at the beginning of the Ptolemaic (Greek) Period in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy I, though his legacy lasted well into the Roman period. Thus, he was meant to form a bridge between the Greek and Egyptian religion in a new age in which their respective gods were bought face to face with each other, so that both Egyptians and Greeks could find union in a specific supreme entity.

Linguistically, the god’s name is a fusion of Osiris and the bull Apis, which by the Greek period might be said to have represented the essence of Egyptian religion. In fact, a cult of this combination god, named Osirapis (or Userhapi, Asar-Hapi), had existed in Egypt prior to the rule of the Ptolemies. Osirapis was basically the sacred bull of Memphis after its death. According to the hieroglyphic texts which were found on stelae and other objects in the Serapeum at Sakkara, established long before the Greek Period, Apis is called “the life of Osiris, the lord of heaven, Tem {with} his horns {in} his head.” and he is said to “give life, strength, health, to thy nostrils for ever.”

Elsewhere from the 18th Dynasty, Osirapis is described as, “the great god, Khent, Amentet, the lord of life forever,” Apis and Osiris were joined together by the priests of Memphis, where the attributes of Apis had been made to assume a funeral character and hence recognized as a god of the Underworld. On a monument of the 19th Dynasty, Apis is said to be “the renewed life of Ptah,” and in an inscription of the 25th Dynasty he is called the “second Ptah.” In the same text we have a mention of the “temple of Asar-Hapi (Osirapis),” and here it is clear that his identity had been merged with that of Osiris. The identification of Apis with Osiris was easy enough, because one of the most common names of Osiris was “Bull of the West”. Apis was, in fact, believed to be animated by the soul of Osiris, and to be Osiris incarnate. The appearance of a new Apis was regarded as a new manifestation of Osiris upon earth.

However, the Greeks added to this Egyptian Core a number of Hellenistic deities, including Zeus, Helios, Dionysus, Hades and Asklepius to form Serapis. Eventually, these Hellenistic deities would predominate the god’s final form. He then emerged as a supreme god of divine majesty and the sun (Zeus and Helios), fertility (Dionysos) the underworld and afterlife, as well as healing (Hades and Asklepius). However, his attributes regarding the afterlife and fertility were always primary to his nature.

Iconography

“In the city on the borders of Egypt which boasts Alexander of Macedon as its founder, Sarapis and Isis are worshiped with a reverence that is almost fanatical. Evidence that the sun, under the name of Sarapis, is the object of all this reverence is either the basket set on the head of the god or the figure of a three-headed creature placed by his statue. The middle head of this figure, which is also the largest, represents a lion’s; on the right a dog raises its head with a gentle and fawning air; and on the left the neck ends in the head of a ravening wolf. All three beasts are joined together by the coils of a serpent whose head returns to the god’s right hand which keeps the monster in check.”

The iconography of Serapis was dominated by Hellenistic elements. In his anthropomorphic form, he was represented as a man wearing a Greek style robe with a Greek hairstyle and full beard. Surmounting his head was often a basket or a tall, dry corn measure (holding a quarter of a bushel), representing his fertility attributes as well as his association with Osiris, who was sometimes a god of grain. At times, he was also provided with curved ram’s horns. At his feet might also set the three-headed dog Cerberus, the guardian of the underworld.

Occasionally, and particularly in conjunction with his consort Isis, the greatest Egyptian goddess during the Greek Period, both deities could be depicted as serpents with human heads (most often on door jambs), where Serapis would be discernable by his beard. When represented in such a fashion, it was usually in relationship to their aspects related to the netherworld and fertility.

Worship of Serapis

The chief center of the worship of Serapis in Ptolemaic times was Alexandria at the great Serapeum, which was considered a wonder and a site of pilgrimage throughout the Mediterranean world, until it was destroyed by order of Emperor Theodosius in 389 AD. The Serapeum which Ptolemy repaired, or founded, was probably around Rhakotis near Pompey’s pillar and was a very remarkable building.

Interestingly, Rhakotis was the small Egyptian village that had been located on the site of what would become Alexandria, and some traditions hold that Osirapis was its local God.

The Temples main plan seems to have resembled that of the famous Serapeum at Memphis, but parts of it were richly painted and gilded, and it possessed a fine library which was said to contain some 300,000 (or perhaps as many as 42,000) volumes. The library was actually an annex of the Great Library of Alexandria, and hence known as the “Daughter Library”.

Within the temple was a specific and famous statue of Serapis. How the statue came to be in Alexandria at this temple is of some interest. Tradition holds that, while Ptolemy was considering the possibility of a hybrid god to unit the Egyptians and Greeks, he had a dream, wherein a colosssal statue of some god appeared to him and bid the king to remove it to Alexandria. According to Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride, 28), he had never seen a similar statue, and he knew neither the place where it stood, nor to whom it belonged. One day he happened to mention his dream to Sosibius, and described the statue which he had seen, whereon this man declared that he had seen a statue like it at Sinope. Tradition says that this was Sinope on the Pontus, and adds that as the inhabitants of the city were extremely unwilling to part with their statue, it, of its own accord, after waiting for three years, entered into a ship and arrived at Alexandria safely after a voyage of only three days. However, others provide that after three years of futile negotiations, Ptolemy’s men simply stole, the statue, claiming that it had boarded their boat on its own.

There were other smaller temples and shrines dedicated to this god in various locations throughout Egypt, but the god’s cult was also spread throughout much of the Graeco-Roman world by traders and other converts. Another Notable cult center was the Greek holy site of Delos, which was founded by an Egyptian priest in the third century BC.

There was even a Roman Period sculpted head of Serapis, dating to the second or early third century AD, discovered in London at the Walbrook Mithraem, and a temple of Serapis is mentioned in an inscription found at the Roman site of Eburacum (modern York) in the United Kingdom. Hence, he was even important enough to reach the most distant areas of the Roman Empire.

Interestingly however, Serapis really never received wide acclaim in Egypt itself, where other more traditional Egyptian deities continued to receive more popular worship.

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Wiki Info

Serapis (Latin spelling) or Sarapis (Ancient Greek: Σάραπις) was a syncretic Hellenistic-Egyptian god in Antiquity. His most renowned temple was the Serapeum of Alexandria. Under Ptolemy Soter, efforts were made to integrate Egyptian religion with that of their Hellenic rulers. Ptolemy’s policy was to find a deity that should win the reverence alike of both groups, despite the curses of the Egyptian priests against the gods of the previous foreign rulers (i.e Set who was lauded by the Hyksos). Alexander the Great had attempted to use Amen for this purpose, but he was more prominent in Upper Egypt, and not as popular with those in Lower Egypt, where the Greeks had stronger influence. The Greeks had little respect for animal-headed figures, and so a Greek-style anthromorphic statue was chosen as the idol, and proclaimed as the equivalent of the highly popular Apis. It was named Aser-hapi (i.e. Osiris-Apis), which became Serapis, and was said to be Osiris in full, rather than just his Ka (life force).

History

The earliest mention of a Serapis is in the disputed death scene of Alexander (323 BC). Here, Serapis has a temple at Babylon, and is of such importance that he alone is named as being consulted on behalf of the dying king. His presence in Babylon would radically alter perceptions of the mythologies of this era, though fortunately it has been discovered that the unconnected Babylonian god Ea (Enki) was titled Serapsi, meaning ‘king of the deep’, and it is possible this Serapsi is the one referred to in the diaries. The significance of this Serapsi in the Hellenic psyche, due to its involvement in Alexander’s death, may have also contributed to the choice of Osiris-Apis as the chief Ptolemaic god.

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. One of the experts was of the Eumolpidae, the ancient family from whose members the hierophant of the Eleusinian Mysteries had been chosen since before history, and the other was the scholarly Egyptian priest Manetho, which gave weight to the judgement both for the Egyptians and the Greeks.

Plutarch may not be correct, however, as some Egyptologists allege that the Sinope in the tale is really the hill of Sinopeion, a name given to the site of the already existing Serapeum at Memphis. Also, according to Tacitus, Serapis (i.e., Apis explicitly identified as Osiris in full) had been the god of the village of Rhakotis before it expanded into the great capital of Alexandria.

The statue suitably depicted a figure resembling Hades or Pluto, both being kings of the Greek underworld, and was shown enthroned with the modius, a basket/grain-measure, on his head, since it was a Greek symbol for the land of the dead. He also held a sceptre in his hand indicating his rulership, with Cerberus, gatekeeper of the underworld, resting at his feet, and it also had what appeared to be a serpent at its base, fitting the Egyptian symbol of rulership, the uraeus.

With his (i.e. Osiris’s) wife Isis, and their son Horus (in the form of Harpocrates), Serapis won an important place in the Greek world, reaching Ancient Rome, with Anubis being identified as Cerberus. In Rome, Serapis was worshiped in the Iseum Campense, the sanctuary of the goddess Isis located in the Campus Martius and built during the Second Triumvirate. The Roman cults of Isis and Serapis gained in popularity late in the first century thanks to the god’s role in the miracles that the imperial usurper Vespasian experienced in the city of Alexandria, where he stayed prior to his return to Rome as emperor in 70 AD. From the Flavian Dynasty on, Serapis sometimes appeared on imperial coinage with the reigning emperor. The great cult survived until 385, when a Christian mob destroyed the Serapeum of Alexandria, and subsequently the cult was forbidden by the Theodosian decree.

The early Alexandrian Christian community appears to have been rather syncretic in their worship of Serapis and Jesus and would prostrate themselves without distinction between the two. A letter inserted in the Augustan History, ascribed to the Emperor Hadrian, refers to the worship of Serapis by residents of Egypt who described themselves as Christians, and Christian worship by those claiming to worship Serapis, suggesting a great confusion of the cults and practices:

The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumour. There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis. There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Christ.

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