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

There were also certain very ancient Sermons (or Songs) of Imhotp, and a saying from one of these

1 A rock inscription found on the cataract island Sehel. R., p. 129.

Sermons, the " Song from the House of King Intf ," is given by Sethe as follows :

" I have heard the words of Imhotp and Hardadaf ; they are still much spoken of, but where are their abodes ? "

Perhaps 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 Musaeus was to the Greeks.

And 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 Ptah of Memphis and of his chief Shrine at Memphis spread widely, and his cult was extended to Thebes and even to Philae. At Thebes he appears united with the Theban Thoth and his younger likeness or image Amenhotep-— the twin-brother of Imhotep (Asclepius) — Son of Hapu, who is said to have lived as a man under King Amenophis III. (Amen-hetep), 1450 B.C., and who tells us himself how he became acquainted with the " Book of God " and saw in vision the " Pre-eminence of Thoth." l

The 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

.AESCULAPIUS THE HEALER

Of the Cult of ^Esculapius 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

1 R., p. 124. Cf. Sethe, JEgyptiaca, Festschrift fur G. Ebers, pp. 106 ff.

2 Ammian. Marc., xxii. 14. 7 ; Vit, Hil, 21.

from a remarkable address recently delivered by the Eev. J. Estlin Carpenter to the students of Manchester College, Oxford,1 in which he says :

" Pass 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 archseologically the roots of four great doctrines associated with the person of Jesus — the Virgin Birth, the Descent into Hades, the Eesurrection, 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 ^Esculapius. 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 Eome, 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 sanc-