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

So 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.

1 Brugsch, Religion u. Myth. d. alt. Ag., p. 451.

2 Op. sup. cit., ibid.

Of the Sayings of this Asclepius a Greek porcelain l 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.

Perhaps 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 "Definitions of Asclepius unto the King " or " The Perfect Sermon of Asclepius unto the King" — C. H., (xvi.) — as 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.

THE SACRED GROUP OF FOUR

What, however, is clear in " The Perfect Sermon " of Hermes himself, where he gives instruction to his three disciples, Asclepius, Tat and Ammon, assembled in the "holy place," 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 " sacred group of four " (P. S. A., i. 2).

1 Published by Wilcken in the " Festschrift fiir Ebers," pp. 142 ff.

With this we may very well compare the group of three made so familiar to us by the Evangelists — the three who were always with the Master in the most intimate moments of His inner life and exaltation — James, John and Peter.

Now, if the reader will refer to my notes on the last paragraph of Hippolytus' Introduction to the Naassene document, he will see that Clement of Alexandria expressly asserts that:

" The Lord imparted the Gnosis to James the Just, to John and Peter, after His Kesurrection ; these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy."

JAMES, JOHN AND PETER

Here 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 — he represents the king-power, and may be equated with Ammon ; while John is the Beloved even as is Tat.

John 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.

A 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.

This 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 : x

1 Given by Thilo, Godex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti (Leipzig,
1832), p. 880. Of. Pick (B.), The Extra-Canonical Life of Christ
(New York, 1903), p. 279.