Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

" Tern 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 Tern must, however, be of very great antiquity, and the fact that the priests of Ea in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties united him to their God under the name of Ea-Tem, proves that his worship was wide-spread, and that the God was thought to possess attributes similar to those of Ka"(#., 349,350).

In the Trismegistic tradition in which Thoth holds the chief place, the Young Tern would thus represent the Young Thoth who succeeded to his Father when that Father ascended to the Gods.

IMHOTEP-IMUTH-ASCLEPIUS

Moreover the Egyptian texts prove that besides Nefer-Tem still another Son of Ptah was regarded as the third member of the Memphitic Triad. This Son was called I-em-hetep (or Imljotep), whom the Greeks called Imouthes or Imuth, and equated him with their Asclepius.

The name I-em-hetep means "He who cometh in Peace," and is very appropriate to the God who brought the knowledge of Healing to mankind ; but I-em-hetep, though specially the God of medicine, was also the God of study and learning in general.

"As 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 ' Scribe of the Gods/ and the authorship of the words of power which protected the dead from enemies of every kind in the Underworld was ascribed to him " (#., 522, 523).

In the " Kitual of Embalmment " l it is said to the Deceased : " Thy soul uniteth itself to I-em-hetep whilst thou art in the funeral valley."

The oldest shrine of the God was situated close to
Memphis, and was called the " Temple of I-em-hetep,
the Son of Ptah," which the Greeks called the
Asclepieion.

Under Ptolemy IV., Philopator (222-205 B.C.), a temple was built to I-em-hetep on the Island of Philae, and from the hieroglyphic inscriptions we learn that the God was called : " Great One, Son of Ptah, 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." 2

Imhotep - Asclepius was thus the "image and likeness of Thoth the Wise," even as Nefer-Tem was

1 See Maspero, op. dt., p. 80. Which of the numerous opp. citt. of Maspero's this may be is not clear from Budge's reference.

2 Cf. Brugsch, Thesaurus, p. 783 ; Religion, p. 527. Sethe,
Imhotep, 1903 — so Budge ; but, more accurately, Sethe (K.),
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und A Itertumskunde Agyptens, ii. 4
(" Imhotep, der Asklepios der Agypter ").

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.

" I-em-hetep," concludes Budge, " was 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 " (ib., 524).

So 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 — if we can use such a phrase of that tradition as strained through the sieve of almost purely physical interpretation.1

THATH-TAT