Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
7. And panta [all] is only a slight variant of pente [five] ; and they call counting pempasasthai [reckoning by fives].
8. And five makes a square equal to the number of letters among Egyptians,4 and a period of as many years as the Apis lives.
9. Thus they usually call Horus also Min 5 — that is,
" being seen " ; for cosmos is a sensible and see-able
thing.
10. And Isis is sometimes called Muth,6 and again Athyri 7 and Methyer. And by the first of the names they mean " Mother " ; by the second, " Cosmic House " of Horus, — as also Plato [calls her] " Ground of Genesis " and " She who receives " ; and the third is compounded from "Full" and "Cause,"— for Matter is full of
1 " One " being reckoned neither odd nor even.
'2 That is, divisible by itself and " one " only.
3 rerpdywvos airit irXevpay aprlov TTJJ SvdSos.
* That is, the Egyptian alphabet consisted of 25 letters.
6 In the Eitual (chap. xvii. 30), the deceased is made to say : " I am the God Amsu (or Min) in his coming forth ; may his two plumes be set upon my head for me." And in answer to the question : " Who, then, is this ? " — the text goes on to say : " Amsu is Horus, the avenger of his father, and his coming forth is his birth. The plumes upon his head are Isis and Nephthys when they go forth to set themselves there, even as his protectors, and they provide that which his head lacketh ; or (as others say), they are the two exceeding great uraei which are upon the head of their father Tern, or (as others say), his two eyes are the two plumes which are upon his head." (Budge, op. ait., ii. 258.)
6 Eg. Mut, the syzygy of Amen. Mut means " Mother " ; she was the World-mother. See Budge, op. tit., ii. 28 ff.
7 Cf. Ixix. 4, " Athyr " probably meaning Hathor.
VOL. i. 22
Cosmos, and consorts with the Good and Pure and
Ordered.
LVIL 1. And Hesiod l also, when he makes all the first [elements to be] Chaos and Earth and Tartarus and Love, might be thought to assume no other principles than these, — if at anyrate in substituting the names we assign to Isis that of Earth, to Osiris that of Love, and to Typhon that of Tartarus ; for his Chaos seems to be subsumed as ground and place of the universe.
2. Our data also in a way invite as witness Plato's myth which Socrates details in the Symposium 2 about the Birth of Love, — telling [us how] that Poverty wanting children lay down by the side of sleeping Means, and conceiving by him brought forth Love of a mixed nature and capable of assuming every shape, in as much, indeed, as he is the offspring of a good and wise father and one sufficient for all, but of an incapable mother and one without means,3 who on account of her need is ever clinging to some one else and importuning some one else.4
3. For his Means is no other than the First Beloved and Desirable and Perfect and Sufficient ; and he calls Matter Poverty, — who is herself of herself deficient of the Good, but is ever being filled by Him and longing for and sharing in [Him].
4. And the Cosmos, that is Horus, is born from these ; and Horus, though neither eternal nor impassible nor indestructible, but ever-generable, continues by means of the changes and periods of his passions to remain ever young and ever to escape destruction.
LVIII. 1. Now, we should make use of the myths not as though they were altogether sacred sermons (logoi), but taking the serviceable [element] of each according to its similitude [to reason].
1 Theog., 116-122.
2 Symp., 203 B ; Jowett, i. 573 ff.
3 air6pov — a play on irSpos.
4 Cf. Iviii. 6, last clause.