{"collection":"Gnosticism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/gno/th1/th150.htm","path":"gno/th1/th150.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/gno/th1/th150.htm","text":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906]\nBudge, in his Gods of the Egyptians (vol. i. ch. xvi.), tells us that the Great Triad of Memphis consisted of Pta\u1e25, Sekhet, and I-em-\u1e25etep.\nPta\u1e25, as we have seen, was the \u201cSculptor or Engraver,\u201d the Demiurge par excellence. He is called the \u201cVery Great God who came into being in the earliest time\u201d; \u201cFather of fathers, Power of powers\u201d; \u201cFather of beginnings and Creator of the Egg[s] of the Sun and Moon\u201d; \u201cLord of Ma\u0101t [Truth], King of the Two Lands, the God of the Beautiful Face . . . who created His own Image, who fashioned His own Body, who hath established Ma\u0101t throughout the Two Lands\u201d; \u201cPta\u1e25 the Disk of Heaven, Illuminer of the Two Lands with the Fire of His Two Eyes.\u201d The \u201cWorkshop of Pta\u1e25\u201d was the World Invisible.\nIt was Pta\u1e25 who carried out the commands concerning the creation of the universe issued by Thoth.\nThe Syzygy or female counterpart of Pta\u1e25 was Sekhet, \u201cwho was at once his sister and wife, and the mother of his son Nefer-Tem, and a sister-form of the Goddess Bast\u201d (op. cit., i. 514). She is called: \u201cGreatly Beloved One of Pta\u1e25, Lady of Heaven, Mistress of the Two Lands\u201d; and one of her commonest names is \u201cNesert,\u201d that is \u201cFlame.\u201d\nIt was Thoth (\u1e6cekh) who, with his Seven Wise Ones, planned the world (ib., 516). But if Pta\u1e25 is the executive power of Thoth and his Seven Wise Ones, so is Thoth the personification of the Intelligence of Pta\u1e25. It is in this way that Sekhet becomes identified with Ma\u0101t, the inseparable spouse of Thoth.\nThe third member of the Memphite Triad is Nefer-Tem, or the \u201cYoung Tem.\u201d In the Ritual (Ch. lxxxi., version B) we read the \u201capology\u201d: \u201cHail, thou Lotus, thou type of the God Nefer-Tem! I am he who knoweth you, and I know your name among the Gods, the Lords of the Underworld, and I am one of you.\u201d Again, in Ch. clxxiv. 19, Nefer-Tem is compared with \u201cthe Lotus at the nostrils of R\u0101\u201d; also, in Ch. clxxviii. 36, Nefer-Tem has the same title.\nIn the later texts Nefer-Tem is identified with many Gods, all of them forms of Horus or Thoth (ib., 522).\nHere we are in contact with the Pta\u1e25-tradition of Memphis which, we have seen, played an important part in the heredity of the cosmogenesis of our \u201cP\u0153mandres\u201d tractate. In it the simultaneous identification and distinction of Thoth and Pta\u1e25 and of Ma\u0101t and Sekhet are naturally explained, and the Son of these Powers is the Young Tem, identified with the Young Horus or Young Thoth who is to succeed his Father. Are we here on the track of the ancestry of our Tat?\nAt Heliopolis (\u0226nnu) the Ancient God Tem was equated with R\u0101. Tem was the Father-God, Lord of Heaven, and Begetter of the Gods (op. cit., i. 92, 93). Usertsen I. rebuilt the sanctuary of Heliopolis about\n[paragraph continues] 2433 B.C., and dedicated it to R\u0101 in the two forms of Horus and Temu (ib., 330).\n\u201cTem was the first living Man-God known to the Egyptians, just as Osiris was the first dead Man-God, and as such was always represented in human form and with a human head. . . .\n\u201cTem was, in fact, to the Egyptians a manifestation of God in human form. . . . It is useless to attempt to assign a date to the period when the Egyptians began to worship God in human form, for we have no material for so doing; the worship of Tem must, however, be of very great antiquity, and the fact that the priests of R\u0101 in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties united him to their God under the name of R\u0101-Tem, proves that his worship was wide-spread, and that the God was thought to possess attributes similar to those of R\u0101\u201d (ib., 349, 350).\nIn the Trismegistic tradition in which Thoth holds the chief place, the Young Tem would thus represent the Young Thoth who succeeded to his Father when that Father ascended to the Gods.\nMoreover the Egyptian texts prove that besides Nefer-Tem still another Son of Pta\u1e25 was regarded as the third member of the Memphitic Triad. This Son was called I-em-\u1e25etep (or Im\u1e25otep), whom the Greeks called Imouth\u0113s or Imuth, and equated him with their Asclepius.\nThe name I-em-\u1e25etep means \u201cHe who cometh in Peace,\u201d and is very appropriate to the God who brought the knowledge of Healing to mankind; but I-em-\u1e25etep, though specially the God of medicine, was also the God of study and learning in general.\n\u201cAs a God of learning he partook of some of the attributes of Thoth, and he was supposed to take the place of this God in the performance of funeral ceremonies, and in superintending the embalming of the dead; in later times he absorbed the duties of Thoth as \u2018Scribe of the Gods,\u2019 and the authorship of the words of power which protected the dead from enemies of every kind in the Underworld was ascribed to him\u201d (ib., 522, 523).\nIn the \u201cRitual of Embalmment\u201d 1 it is said to the Deceased: \u201cThy soul uniteth itself to I-em-\u1e25etep whilst thou art in the funeral valley.\u201d\nThe oldest shrine of the God was situated close to Memphis, and was called the \u201cTemple of I-em-\u1e25etep, the Son of Pta\u1e25,\u201d which the Greeks called the Ascl\u0113pieion.\nUnder Ptolemy IV., Philopator (222-205 B.C.), a temple was built to I-em-\u1e25etep on the Island of Phil\u00e6, and from the hieroglyphic inscriptions we learn that the God was called: \u201cGreat One, Son of Pta\u1e25, the Creative God, made by Thenen, begotten by him and beloved by him, the God of divine forms in the temples, who giveth life to all men, the Mighty One of wonders, the Maker of times [?], who cometh unto him that calleth upon him wheresoever he may be, who giveth sons to the childless, the wisest and most learned one, the image and likeness of Thoth the Wise.\u201d 2\nIm\u1e25otep-Asclepius was thus the \u201cimage and likeness of Thoth the Wise,\u201d even as Nefer-Tem was\n[paragraph continues] Young Thoth. Here we have precisely the distinction drawn between Asclepius and Tat in our Trismegistic literature; Asclepius was trained in all philosophy, Tat was young and as yet untrained.\n\u201cI-em-\u1e25etep,\u201d concludes Budge, \u201cwas the God who sent sleep to those who were suffering and in pain, and those who were afflicted with any kind of disease formed his special charge; he was the Good Physician both of Gods and men, and he healed the bodies of mortals during life, and superintended the arrangements for the preservation of the same after death. . . . He was certainly the God of physicians and of all those who were occupied with the mingled science of medicine and magic; and when we remember that several of the first Kings of the Early Empire are declared by Manetho, whose statements have been supported by the evidence of the papyri, to have written, i.e. caused to be edited, works on medicine, it is clear that the God of medicine was in Memphis as old as the archaic period\u201d (ib., 524).\nSo much for the more important information that Budge has to offer us on the subject of Asclepius-Imuth from the side of pure Egyptian tradition\u2014if we can use such a phrase of that tradition as strained through the sieve of almost purely physical interpretation. 1\nAnd now let us turn to Reitzenstein and his instructive Dissertation, \u201cHermes u. Sch\u00fcler\u201d (pp. 117 ff.).\nUnquestionably the most general form of sermon found in the remains of our Trismegistic literature is that of instruction to Tat the \u201cSon\u201d of Hermes, who is \u201cFather\u201d and Initiator. Of these instructions two Corpora existed, namely, \u201cThe General Sermons\u201d and \u201cThe Expository Sermons.\u201d\nThe name Tat is, of course, a variant of Thoth (Te\u1e25ut); but whereas Hermes himself is always in such sermons characterised as Thrice-greatest, Tat has not yet reached to this grade of mastership; he is still \u201cYoung.\u201d\nThe name \u201cTat\u201d occurs in one of the prayers in the Magic Papyri, part of which is undecipherable, and can only be translated by following the conjecture of Reitzenstein (p. 117, n. 6).\n\u201cShow thyself unto me in thy prophetic power O God of mighty mind, Thrice-great Hermes! Let him who rules the four regions of the Heavens and the four foundations of the Earth appear. Be present unto me O thou in Heaven, be present unto me thou from the Egg. . . . Speak, the Two Gods also are round thee,\u2014the one God is called Th\u0101th and the other Haf.\u201d 1\nSpiegelberg equates Haf with \u1e24pj, the \u201cGenius of the Dead\u201d who appears coupled with Thoth in a Coptic Magic Papyrus of the second century A.D., 2 where Isis speaks of \u201cmy father Ape-Thoth.\u201d This thus seems to identify Haf with Anubis\u2014that is, Harmanup or Horus as Anubis. And Anubis, as Hermes-Tat, was considered in Egyptian tradition to be a composer of sacred scripture. 3\nThe prayer just cited appears to put us into contact with the atmosphere of some inner mysteries of spiritual instruction. The God or Spiritual Master contains in himself his disciple, or a duad or triad of disciples; the relationship of Master and disciple is of the most intimate nature; not only is it of that of father to son, but of mother to child\u2014for the disciple is born in the womb of the Master Presence. The disciple is as it were his ka.\nThus for the Egyptians, as Sethe and others have pointed out, the wise priest, that is a priest truly initiated into the Wisdom, was regarded as an incarnation of Thoth, and such an one after the death of his body was worshipped as Thoth.\nAnd so we find at Medinet Habu the remains of a shrine, erected in the time of Ptolemy IX. (Euergetes II.)\u2014146-117 BC.\u2014to a certain High Priest of Memphis, Teos, who is called \u201cTeos the Ibis,\u201d 1 that is Thoth, and so identified with Thoth himself.\nWhat we learn from the general tradition of this belief in the \u201cincarnation\u201d of Thoth into the perfected disciple of Wisdom, and the ascription of sacred literature to similar though not identical God-names to that of Thoth himself, is that there was on the one\nhand a firm belief in the unity of the Thoth-tradition, and on the other a necessary division of the sacred literature into older and later periods. The Thoth of the older period was regarded as a God, the Thoth of more recent times as a God-man. 1 And so we find Plato in the famous passage of the Philebus, 18 B, uncertain whether to speak of Thoth as God or man.\nIn the known oldest references to the Thoth-Hermes literature, there has so far not been discovered anything that suggests the existence of a distinction between Hermes [Thoth] and Tat [Thoth]; but the absence of references proves little. Already, however, Nechepso and Petosiris, in the second century B.C., make Hermes the teacher of the younger God-disciples Anubis and Asclepius; in which connection it is of interest to note the following passage from a horoscope for the first year of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, 2 set up by the priests of Hermes at Thebes\u2014the Greek of which is very faulty and evidently written by \u201cBarbari\u201d:\n\u201cAfter enquiry based on many books, handed down to us by the wise Ancients, the Chald\u00e6ans,\u2014both Petosiris,and especially King Necheus [sic; i.e. Nechepso], in as much as they also took counsel of our Lord Hermes and of Asclepius, that is of Imouth\u0113s, son of Heph\u0113stus. . . .\u201d 3\nFrom this we learn that in the second century A.D. the writings of Petosiris and Nechepso, together with the \u201cChald\u00e6an Books,\u201d still formed part of the Temple Library at Thebes; moreover, that Petosiris and Nechepso, in the second century B.C., based themselves on these Books as well as on Books ascribed to both Hermes and Asclepius. Moreover, from the Fragments of Nechepso 1 we learn that he had before him a sermon of Asclepius called Moirogenesis, concerning the Genesis of Fate, and also Dialogues in which Hermes instructs Asclepius and Anubis concerning the mysteries of astrology. These Trismegistic works must thus be dated prior to the beginning of the second century B.C.\nSethe, in his essay on Asclepius-Imhotep, has endeavoured to show that this Imuth was originally a man, and that divine honours were first paid to him in the reign of Am\u0101sis (Am\u014dsis\u2014\u0226\u0101\u1e25-mes), about 1700 B.C.\nManetho, however, tells us another story, when he writes of a certain king of the Third Dynasty (B.C. 3700): \u201cToso[r]thrus reigned twenty-nine years. He is called Asclepius by the Egyptians, for his medical knowledge. He built a house of hewn stones, and greatly patronised literature.\u201d 2\nTosothrus is Tcheser or Tcheser-sa (Do\u015ber), the second king of the Third Dynasty from Memphis. The \u201chouse of hewn stones\u201d which he built, received remarkable confirmation from the excavations which were carried out by the Prussian General Minutoli in 1819, 3 in the Step-Pyramid of \u1e62a\u1e33\u1e33\u0101ra. This temple,\nsays Budge (op. cit., i. 219) \u201cis certainly the oldest of all the large buildings which have successfully resisted the action of wind and weather, and destruction by the hand of man.\u201d\nIn the Inscription of the Seven Famine Years, 1 moreover, belonging in its present form to the later Ptolemaic period, but a copy of a far more ancient record, we read, in Sethe\u2019s restored Greek text:\n\u201cTosothrus, in whose days (lived) Imouth\u0113s. He was considered by the Egyptians to be Asclepius because of his knowledge of the healing art; he discovered the art of building with hewn stones, and, moreover, occupied himself with literature.\u201d\nWe thus learn that long before Manetho\u2019s time there was an Asclepian literature, and not only did this deal with medicine but also with scripture in general and with \u201cmasonry.\u201d\nThat Asclepius was specially occupied with the sacred building-art, may be seen from Sethe\u2019s study, whose industry has discovered a book on Temple-building ascribed to Imuth, a \u201cBook that came from Heaven northwards from Memphis.\u201d It was according to this Book that Ptolemy X. (Soter II.) and Ptolemy XI. (Alexander I.) enlarged the building of their ancestors at Edfu, \u201cin agreement with the writing concerning the plans of the Temple of Horus, which the chief prelector of the priests, Imhotp, the son of Pta\u1e25, had written.\u201d\nThere were also certain very ancient Sermons (or Songs) of Imhotp, and a saying from one of these\n[paragraph continues] Sermons, the \u201cSong from the House of King Intf,\u201d is given by Sethe as follows:\n\u201cI have heard the words of Imhotp and Hardadaf; they are still much spoken of, but where are their abodes?\u201d\nPerhaps this explains the statement in S. H. I. (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 467, 4) that Asclepius-Imuth was the inventor of poetry. Imuth was to the Egyptians what Orpheus, Linus or Mus\u00e6us was to the Greeks.\nAnd so Reitzenstein (p. 121) concludes that the tradition of the old Egyptian and Hellenistic literature is unbroken. In Hellenistic times this view of the Divine Son of Pta\u1e25 of Memphis and of his chief Shrine at Memphis spread widely, and his cult was extended to Thebes and even to Phil\u00e6. At Thebes he appears united with the Theban Thoth and his younger likeness or image Amenhotep\u2014the twin-brother of Imhotep (Asclepius) Son of Hapu, who is said to have lived as a man under King Amenophis III. (\u0226men-\u1e25etep), 1450 B.C., and who tells us himself how he became acquainted with the \u201cBook of God\u201d and saw in vision the \u201cPre-eminence of Thoth.\u201d 1\nThe chief Temple of Asclepius at Memphis was still honoured in later times, and even in the days of Jerome its priesthood was renowned for its occult wisdom. 2\nOf the Cult of \u00c6sculapius in Greece and of the widespread influence of this ideal there is little need to remind the student of the comparative history of religions; we cannot, however, refrain from appending a paragraph\nfrom a remarkable address recently delivered by the Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter to the students of Manchester College, Oxford, 1 in which he says:\n\u201cPass beyond the limits of Israel and its hopes, and you enter a world of religious phenomena, so varied as to be practically inexhaustible, and all the patient labour of the last thirty years has only begun to exhibit to us its contents. At every turn you are confronted with beliefs resembling those which pervade our New Testament, so that Prof. Cheyne has recently attempted in a very remarkable little volume, Bible Problems, to trace arch\u00e6ologically the roots of four great doctrines associated with the person of Jesus\u2014the Virgin Birth, the Descent into Hades, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. The inscriptions reveal to you the very language of Christianity in the making. The hymns and liturgies of other faiths derive their strength from similar ideas, and express similar aspirations. Does Jesus, according to the Gospels, give sight to the blind, and call the dead back to life? So does \u00c6sculapius. He, too, is wondrously born; he, too, is in danger in his infancy. He, too, heals the sick and raises the dead, till Zeus, jealous of this infringement of his prerogatives, smites him with his thunderbolt, and translates him to the world above. But from his heavenly seat he continues to exercise his healing power. His worship spreads all through Greece. After a great plague in Rome, in 291 B.C., it is planted on a sacred island in the Tiber. In the first century of our era you may follow it all round the Eastern Mediterranean. In Greece alone Pausanias mentions sixty-three Asklepieia. There were others in Asia Minor, Egypt, Sicily; nearly two hundred being still traceable. They were both\nsanctuaries and medical schools. A number of inscriptions relate details of cures, or consecrate the ex-votos, which are still dedicated at Loretto or Lourdes. The temple by the Tiber won special fame in the reign of Antoninus Pius, for the restoration of the sight of a blind man. \u00c6sculapius himself bears the titles \u2018king\u2019 and \u03b8\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c3\u03c9\u03c4\u03ae\u03c1, \u2018divine saviour.\u2019 He was even \u03c3\u03c9\u03c4\u1f74\u03c1 \u03c4\u1ff6\u03bd \u1f45\u03bb\u03c9\u03bd, \u2018saviour of the universe.\u2019 In his cosmic significance he was thus identified-with Zeus himself, and on earth he was felt to be \u2018most loving to man\u2019 (cp. Tit. iii. 4). Harnack, in one of the fascinating chapters of his Expansion of Christianity, has traced the action of these influences on later Christianity conceived as a religion of healing or salvation, medicine alike of body and of mind. It must be enough now to remind you that the god was believed to reveal himself to those who sought his aid, and Origen affirms that a great multitude, both of Greeks and barbarians, acknowledge that they \u2018have frequently seen, and still see, no mere phantom, but \u00c6sculapius himself, healing and doing good, and foretelling the future.\u2019\u201d\nBut to pass on to the Trismegistic Asclepius.\nAsclepius comes forward in our literature as the type of a disciple of Trismegistus already trained in philosophy. This prior training must presumably be referred to the Ptah-tradition\u2014Ptah being himself a God of Revelation, that is of teaching by means of apocalypsis, and Asclepius being originally his \u201cson\u201d and \u201cpriest.\u201d But not only was Ptah a God of apocalypsis generally, but also a God of medicine, as he must needs have been for his son to have learned his wisdom from him.\n[paragraph continues] This view is brought out in a Hellenistic text which reads as follows:\n\u201cA Remedy from the shrines of Heph\u00e6stus [Ptah] at Memphis interpreted by the decision and owing to the philanthropy, they say, of Thrice-greatest Hermes; for he decided that it should be published with a view to man\u2019s saving. It was found on a golden tablet written in Egyptian characters.\u201d 1\nThe tradition of the date when Asclepius was admitted to the Trismegistic discipline is given in K. K., 3 (Stob., Ec., i. 49; W. p. 387, 1). After the ascension of Hermes, we are told:\n\u201cTo him succeeded Tat, who was at once his son and heir unto these knowledges; and not long afterwards Asclepius-Imuth, according to the will of Ptah who is Heph\u00e6stus.\u201d\nWhat precise historical worth this tradition may contain, it is impossible to say; all we can suppose is that there was at some early date a union of two schools of mystic discipline belonging respectively to the Thebaic and Memphitic traditions. This union may have been somewhat analogous to that of the disciples of John the Baptist and of Jesus. What is clear, however, from our Trismegistic writings, is that there is no doubt whatever in the writer\u2019s mind that the Trismegistic tradition is in possession of the higher wisdom; and, indeed, C. H., xiii. (xiv.) distinctly allows us to conclude that though. Tat was younger, in so far as he had not the technical training of the Asclepius-grade, it is nevertheless Tat, when he reaches \u201cmanhood,\u201d and not Asclepius, who succeeds to the mastership of the School.\nNevertheless we find a number of Trismegistic writings, presupposed especially in \u201cThe Definitions of\n[paragraph continues] Asclepius\u201d and in \u201cThe Perfect Sermon,\u201d in which both Tat and Asclepius share in a common instruction\u2014Asclepius appearing as the older and riper scholar.\nThis makes Reitzenstein (p. 122) suppose that this type of what we may call a company of two disciples was invented by the Hermes priests at Thebes, and that it was later on taken over by the Memphitic Ptah-Asclepius priests and developed in their own interest.\nThis may be so if we must be compelled to speculate on the dim shades of history which may be recovered from these obscure indications.\nOf the Trismegistic writings of Asclepius, Lactantius (D. I., ii. 15, 7) mentions a \u201cPerfect Sermon\u201d to the King (Ammon), 1 and also refers to a rich ancient literature by Asclepius addressed to the same king.\nReitzenstein (p. 123), moreover, says that C. H., (xvii.) presupposes writings addressed to the same King Ammon by Tat; but I gather that the persons of the dialogue are really Asclepius and the King, and not Tat, and that Tat has been substituted for Asclepius by some copyist in error.\nHowever this may be, there was a large literature addressed by Hermes himself to Ammon, as we may see from the distinct statement in P. S. A., i. 2, and also from Stob\u00e6us, Exx. xii.-xix. The same tradition is preserved in the presumably later Hermetic treatise, Iatromathematica, which is also addressed to Ammon. 2\nHere, then, we have another type of literature, and that, too, very ancient, in which the wise Priest and Prophet is set over against the King as teacher or discoverer of hidden wisdom. This we have already seen to have been the relationship between the Priest and Prophet Petosiris and King Nechepso. But the type goes still further back to pre-Greek times in Egypt. It was, as we have learned from Plutarch, who probably hands on the information direct from Manetho, a necessity that the King, to be a true King, should be initiated into the wisdom of the Priests.\nAs we have already seen, Imuth-Asclepius appears in Manetho as an inventor, so also in the charming story put into the mouth of Socrates by Plato in his Ph\u00e6drus (274 C) about \u201cthe famous old God whose name was Theuth,\u201d\u2014Thoth is the inventor par excellence. In this story\u2014which elicits the remark from Ph\u00e6drus: \u201cYes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country\u201d\u2014Thoth takes his inventions to a certain King Thamus for his approval or disapproval, as to whether or no the Egyptians might be allowed the benefit of them. This Thamus was \u201cKing of the whole country of Egypt, and dwelt in that great city of upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the God Himself is called by them Ammon.\u201d\nIn Hecat\u00e6us, also, Osiris, King of Thebes, has all inventions laid before him, and gives special honour to Hermes whose inventions were far and wide renowned. 1\nIn this connection it is to be noted that in the Theban Thoth-cult, Thoth was regarded as the Representative\nof the King and Light-God R\u0101 (or Ammon). And so we read on the tomb of Seti I.:\n\u201cThou art in my place, my representative. Wherefore are thou moreover called Thoth, Representative of the Light-God R\u0101.\u201d 1\nFrom these and other indications it is quite possible to conclude that Plato has used an ancient Egyptian logos as the basis of his story, and that this logos at a very early period found an echo in written instructions given by Thoth to the King.\nAll this took place on purely Egyptian ground, and hence the type of instruction from Thoth-Hermes to Ammon was fairly established in tradition before it was taken over by our Hellenistic Trismegistic writers.\nSo far, however, I believe, no reference to books written by Imhotep (Asclepius) to Ammon in the pre-Greek period has been discovered. Sethe, 2 however, tells us that a certain Amenhotep who lived as early as the fifteenth century B.C., was a disciple and seer of Thoth. This Amenhotep was famous as a teacher of wisdom and discoverer of magic books; he was probably also renowned for his own writings as well. Gradually this Amenhotep became blended with Imhotep-Asclepius as his twin-brother, and finally in Ptolemaic times received divine honours at Thebes. Here, then, we have the blending in of another tradition, of a writer of books who was a disciple of Thoth, and was gradually confounded with Asclepius-Imuth, son of Ptah. And that there were two Asclepiuses, an older and a later, we are told distinctly by P. S. A., xxxvii. 3.\nOf the Sayings of this Asclepius a Greek porcelain 1 gives us some idea. The first three Sayings, however, are simply taken from the Sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece; the rest may be partially Egyptian. This scrap of evidence, however, is of importance; for already in the third century B.C., Orphic Sayings are known to have been worked up with Egyptian material, and here we have Greek gnomic material blended with an Egyptian Imuth-tradition of Sayings.\nPerhaps still more careful research may reward us with further side-lights on the development of this Asclepius-literature prior to the Greek period, and in its earliest Hellenistic forms. As it is, we are left with the impression that the traces which have been already discovered, justify the remarks made by the writer of our Trismegistic \u201cDefinitions of Asclepius unto the King\u201d or \u201cThe Perfect Sermon of Asclepius unto the King\u201d\u2014C. H., (xvi.)\u2014as based upon a well-established tradition in the School, concerning the change brought about by putting the Egyptian forms of the Asclepian writings, which were of a very mystical nature, into the more precise forms of the Greek tongue.\nWhat, however, is clear in \u201cThe Perfect Sermon\u201d of Hermes himself, where he gives instruction to his three disciples, Asclepius, Tat and Ammon, assembled in the \u201choly place,\u201d is that the history of the matter is of small moment to the writer of that Sermon. He is dealing with the inner and more intimate side of the teaching. Asclepius, Tat and Ammon are for him the sacred triad, forming with the Master himself the \u201csacred group of four\u201d (P. S. A., i. 2).\nWith this we may very well compare the group of three made so familiar to us by the Evangelists\u2014the three who were always with the Master in the most intimate moments of His inner life and exaltation\u2014James, John and Peter.\nNow, if the reader will refer to my notes on the last paragraph of Hippolytus\u2019 Introduction to the Naassene document, he will see that Clement of Alexandria expressly asserts that:\n\u201cThe Lord imparted the Gnosis to James the Just, to John and Peter, after His Resurrection; these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy.\u201d\nHere I would suggest that we have a similarity of conception. Asclepius is the main subsequent teacher, even as James is, in Christian tradition; Peter is the organiser, to whom the rulership over the Church is given\u2014he represents the king-power, and may be equated with Ammon; while John is the Beloved even as is Tat.\nJohn understands the spirit of the teaching best of all; James is more learned on the formal side; while Peter is the organiser, and in many an apocryphal story is made to display lack of control and want of understanding.\nA most interesting scrap of Johannine tradition will throw some further light on the fact that John succeeded to the spiritual directorship, even as Tat, in our sermons, succeeds to Trismegistus.\nThis scrap is an addition to John xvii. 26, from a Codex of the Fourth Gospel, preserved in the Archives of the Templars of St John of Jerusalem in Paris: 1\n\u201cYe have heard what I said unto you: I am not of this world, the Comforter is among you, teach through the Comforter. As the Father has sent Me, even so send I you. Amen, I say unto you, I am not of this world; but John shall be your father, till he shall go with Me into Paradise. And He anointed them with the Holy Spirit.\u201d\nSo also in an addition to John xix. 26-30, we read:\n\u201cHe saith to His mother, Weep not; I go to My Father and to Eternal Life. Behold thy son! He will keep My place. Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother! Then bowing His head He gave up the Ghost.\u201d\nHere then at the Supreme Crisis the Master constitutes John the spiritual Father of the School in His place. So is it with Tat.\nThe idea of triads and other groups (e.g. of five and seven) united in the Presence of a Master, is familiar to the student of Druidical mysticism. In our \u201cPerfect Sermon\u201d we have such a triad, each disciple distinguished by strongly-marked characteristics; the tuning of these into one harmony, so that, to use another and a familiar simile, the disciples may be as the fingers of one hand, for the Master\u2019s use, is a matter of enormous difficulty. One is characterised by Power, another by Knowledge, and another by Love. All three must sink their individually strongest characteristic in a supreme sacrifice, where all blend together into the Wisdom of the Master. This seems to me to be the inner purport of our \u201cPerfect Sermon,\u201d and whatever may be the history of the evolution of the\nforms of the literature, the eternal fact of the nature of the intimate teaching of the Christ to the Three was known to our writer.\nLet us now turn to the type of Trismegistic literature in which Osiris and Isis came forward as disciples; and first of all let us take a glance at the God Chnum, Chnubis, or Chnuphis (Knuphis), whose name occurs in so many of the Abraxas and Abraxoid gems.\nChnum was for Southern Egypt precisely what Ptah of Memphis was for Northern Egypt. He was the Fashioner of men, even as a potter makes pots on a wheel. Chnum was Demiurge and God of the heart. The chief centre of his cult was at Syene and the Island of Elephantine. Here he was regarded as the Father of Osiris. And so we hear of astrological dialogues between Chnum and Osiris, as, for instance, when we are told:\n\u201cAnd all that Kouphis, who is with them [the Egyptians], the Good Daimon, handed on, and his disciple Osiris philosophized.\u201d 1\nThese writings were grouped with those of Nechepso, and also with our Trismegistic writings. Compare the passage in Firmicus Maternus which runs:\n\u201cAll things which Mercurius (Hermes) and Chnubis [?] handed on to \u00c6sculapius (Asclepius), which Petosiris discovered and Nechepso.\u201d 2\nThe Patristic references to our Trismegistic literature further imform us that Osiris was regarded as the disciple of Agathodaimon, who in them bears the name of Thrice-greatest. 1 There is, however, nothing to show that Hermes himself appears in them as the disciple of Chnubis, as Reitzenstein says (p. 126). The introductory phrase of Lactantius to Frag. xix. runs: \u201cBut I [L.] will call to mind the words of Hermes the Thrice-greatest; in the \u2018To Asclepius\u2019 he says: \u2018Osiris said: How, then, O thou Thrice-greatest, [thou] Good Daimon, did Earth in its entirety appear?\u2019\u201d\nHere we have a sermon of Hermes quoting from a tradition in which Osiris appears as the disciple of Agathodaimon, who is also called Trismegistus; that is, the Agathodaimon-Osiris Dialogue type was old, and presumably pertained to one of the earliest forms of the Trismegistic literature, probably contemporary with the most ancient P\u0153mandres type. This type seems to have borne impressions of the form of the \u201cBooks of the Chald\u00e6ans\u201d type of cosmogenesis, which we have seen to have strongly influenced Petosiris and Nechepso in the early second century B.C.\nAgathodaimon is to Osiris as P\u0153mandres to Hermes.\nSo also in the early Alchemical literature there is a treatise of Agathodaimon addressed to Osiris, and in it others are presupposed. 2 These Alchemical teachings of the Good Daimon are frequently in close contact with\nour Trismegistic doctrines; moreover, in the same literature, Hermes refers to Agathodaimon and appears to regard himself as his disciple. 1 It thus may be supposed that it was from Chnum that was originally derived the tradition of the Agathodaimonites. So thinks Reitzenstein; but I do not think that we have sufficient evidence as yet for so general a conclusion. The term Agathodaimon is a very general one, it is true, but the whole idea cannot be refunded into Chnum; in fact, Osiris is quite as much Agathodaimon as Chnum, and in C. H., xii. (xiii.), which deals with the General Mind, Good Mind, or Good Daimon, Agathodaimon is taken in the most general sense, and in the three quotations there made by Hermes from the \u201cSayings of the Good Daimon\u201d (\u00a7\u00a7 1, 8, 13), 2 we find that they are in the words of Heracleitus as inspired by the Logos; so that in reality Agathodaimon must be equated with Logos. The origin of Agathodaimon is then not solely Chnum; and Hermes therefore cannot be spoken of as the disciple of Chnubis, unless we can cite texts in which Thoth is so described.\nIn our Trismegistic literature the teaching is quite simple and distinct; as, for instance, in C. H., x. (xi.) 23: \u201cHe [Mind] is the Good Daimon.\u201d\nWhen, however, Reitzenstein (p. 128) declares that the sentence in \u00a7 25 of the same sermon, \u201cFor this cause can a man dare say that man on earth is God subject to death, while God in heaven is man from death immune,\u201d 3 is a saying belonging to the\n[paragraph continues] Chnuphis-literature, we think he is going beyond the limits of probable conjecture, unless we substitute for Chnuphis the general term Agathodaimon in the sense of Logos.\nWhen again Reitzenstein (p. 129) says that the fragments he has adduced show that Hermes was a later addition in the Agathodaimon-literature, and gradually pushed on one side Osiris the Son of the God of Revelation, we are not convinced that we have correctly recovered the \u201chistory\u201d\u2014for in the great Osiris-myth it is Hermes who is always the teacher of wisdom and not Osiris.\nNevertheless that a wide-spread Chnuphis-literature, in the Agathodaimonistic sense, existed prior to the second century B.C., Reitzenstein has shown by a number of interesting quotations (pp. 129-133). In Hellenistic times the worship of Chnuphis as the Primal Deity and God of Revelation was strongly established, and, most interesting of all for us, his symbol was the serpent. The symbol, then, of Agathodaimon as Logos was the Serpent of Wisdom, and we are in contact with the line of tradition of the Gnostic Ophites and Naassenes. And so also in Ptolemaic times we find his syzygy, Isis, also symbolised as a serpent, and both of them frequently as serpents with human heads; they are both \u201cas wise as serpents.\u201d And as Horus was their son, so we find the hawk-headed symbol of that God united with a serpent body. So also we find Agathodaimon, in his sun-aspect, symbolised as a serpent with a lion\u2019s head. 1 He is the \u00c6on.\nIn addition to the types of Hermes and his disciples, and Agathodaimon and his disciples, we have also in our Trismegistic literature another type\u2014namely, Isis and her disciples. Isis is the ancient Lady of all wisdom, and Teacher of all magic. In the early Hellenistic period she is substituted for Hermes as Orderer of the cosmos, 1 while Plutarch calls her Lady of the Heart and Tongue even as is Hermes. 2 She \u201csees\u201d the teaching.\nAs her disciple, she has in the Stob\u00e6an Ex. xxxi. 3 a king, probably King Ammon.\nIn a Magic Papyrus she even appears as teacher of Asclepius. 4 But the more usual and natural type is that of Isis as teacher of her son Horus, and so we find Lucian speaking of Pythagoras visiting Egypt to learn wisdom of her prophets, and saying that the sage of Samos descended into the adyta and learned the Books of Horus and Isis. 5 To this type of literature belongs our lengthy Stob\u00e6an Exx. xxv.-xxvii.\nBut in all of this Isis owes her wisdom to face to face instruction by the most ancient Hermes, with whom she gets into contact through spiritual vision. All this I have discussed in the Commentaries to Exx. xxv.-xxvii.; the conclusion being that to the mind of the P\u0153mandrists, no matter how ancient might be any line of tradition, whether of Agathodaimon or Osiris or Isis, the direct teaching of the Mind transcended it.\n460:1 See Maspero, op. cit., p. 80. Which of the numerous opp. citt. of Maspero\u2019s this may be is not clear from Budge\u2019s reference.\n460:2 Cf. Brugsch, Thesaurus, p. 783; Religion, p. 527. Sethe, Imhotep, 1903\u2014so Budge; but, more accurately, Sethe (K.), Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Altertumskunde \u00c4gyptens, ii. 4 (\u201cImhotep, der Asklepios der \u00c4gypter\u201d).\n461:1 For Asclepius among the Greeks, see Thraemer\u2019s article \u201cAsklepios\u201d in Reseller\u2019s Lex. d. . . . Mythologie (Leipzig, 1884-1900), i. 615-641; also the \u201cCornell Studies in Classical Philosophy,\u201d No. III., The Cult of Asklepios, by Alice Walton, Ph.D. (Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.A., 1894).\n462:1 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 38, 11. 550 ff.; Kenyon, Cat. of Gk. Pap., p. 102.\n462:2 Griffith, in Zeitschr. f. \u00e4g. Sprache (1900), p. 90.\n462:3 According to Manetho; see M\u00fcller, Manetho Fragm., 4.\n463:1 Teephibis. Cf. Catal. Cod. Astral. Gr\u00e6c., i. 167: \u201cHermes Phibi the Thrice-greatest.\u201d Sethe (op. sup. cit.) would equate this Teephibis with Hermes of Thebes, in connection with the statement of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I. xxi. 134): \u201cOf those, too, who once lived as men among the Egyptians, but who have been made Gods by human opinion, are Hermes of Thebes and Asclepius of Memphis.\u201d If this is correct, we have our Trismegistus nourishing as Teephibis at the end of the second century B.C. But there seems to my mind to be nothing definite in Sethe\u2019s contention.\n464:1 There is also an older and younger Isis in the K. K. extracts, and also in both these and in P. S. A. an older and younger Asclepius.\n464:2 R. (p. 119) has \u201cdes Kaisers Antonius\u201d; but I know of no Emperor so called. The first years of Antoninus Pius would be 138-139 A.D.\n464:3 Pap. du Louvre, 19 bis, Notices et Extraits, xviii. 2, 136.\n465:1 Riess, Fr. 25.\n465:2 Cory, An. Frags., p. 100. Budge, A History of Egypt (London, 1902), i. 218.\n465:3 Reise zum Tempel des Jupiter Ammon, pp. 296 ff.\n466:1 A rock inscription found on the cataract island Seh\u00eal. R., p. 129.\n467:1 R., p. 124. Cf. Sethe, \u00c6gyptiaca, Festschrift f\u00fcr G. Ebers, pp. 106 ff.\n467:2 Ammian. Marc., xxii. 14. 7; Vit, Hil., 21.\n468:1 \u201cChristianity in the Light of Historical Science,\u201d in The Examiner (London), Oct. 21, 1905, pp. 668 ff.\n470:1 Cod. Antinori 101, fol. 361.\n471:1 Probably our C. H. (xvi.).\n471:2 Camerarius, Astrologica (N\u00fcrnberg, 1537); Hermetis Iatromath., ed. Hoeschel (1597); Ideler, Physici et Medici Gr\u00e6ci Minores, i. 387 and 430. Iatromathematici were those who practised medicine in conjunction with astrology, as was done in Egypt (Procl., Paraph. Ptol., p. 24).\n472:1 Diodor., I. 15, 16.\n473:1 Brugsch, Religion u. Myth. d. alt. \u00c4g., p. 451.\n473:2 Op. sup. cit., ibid.\n474:1 Published by Wilcken in the \u201cFestschrift f\u00fcr Ebers,\u201d pp. 142 ff.\n475:1 Given by Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti (Leipzig, 1832), p. 880. Cf. Pick (B.), The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ (New York, 1903), p. 279.\n477:1 Cramer, Anecd. Ox., iii. 171, 20.\n477:2 Fir. Mat., iv. pro\u0153m. 5 (Skutsch and Kroll, p. 196, 21). The \u201cand Chnubis\u201d is the emendation of R. for the unintelligible letters \u201ceinhnusuix.\u201d\n478:1 Cf. Lactantius Fragg., xiv., xix., xxi., xxii.\n478:2 Berthelot, Les Alchimistes grecs, Texte, p. 268.\n479:1 Op. cit., pp. 125, 156-263.\n479:2 We meet with a similar collection of Sayings, or Summaries of the chief points of teaching, in the Stob\u00e6an Ex. i. 7 ff., belonging to the Tat-literature, and also in (C. H., x. (xi.), xiv. (xv.), and (xvi.).\n479:3 A very similar phrase occurs in Dio Cassius, Fr. 30; i. 87, ed. Boiss.\n480:1 See the Nechepso Fragment 29 (Riess, p. 379).\n481:1 R., Zwei relig. Frag., 104 ff.\n481:2 De Is. et Os., xlviii.\n481:3 With heading: \u201cOf Hermes from the [Sermon] of Isis to Horus.\u201d\n481:4 Wessely, Denkschr. d. K. K. Akad. (1893), p. 41, 1. 633.\n481:5 Alectruon, 18.","title":"Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 1: XVI. The Disciples of Thrice-Greatest Hermes","type":"page"}