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

THB present chapter will be devoted to a brief consideration of the nature, powers, and attributes of the divine personification Thoth (Tehuti), the Master of Wisdom and Truth, on the ground of pure Egyptian tradition. As I have unfortunately no sufficient knowledge of Egyptian, I am not in a position to control by the texts the information which will be set before the reader ; it will, however, be derived from the works of specialists, and mainly from the most recent study on the subject, the two sumptuous volumes of Dr E. A. Wallis Budge, the keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum.

First of all, however, let us see what the German scholar Pietschmann has had to say on Thoth in his monograph specially devoted to Thrice-greatest Hermes according to Egyptian, Greek, and Oriental traditions.1

The first part of Pietschmann's treatise, in which he seems to be content, as far as his own taste and feeling are concerned, to trace the original of the grandiose concept of the Thrice-greatest to the naive conception of an "ibis-headed moon-god," is devoted to the consideration of what he calls the god Te^-Tehuti among 2the Egyptians. Why Pietschmann should have chosen this double form of the name for his sub-title is not very clear. The variants appear to be Tefr, Teb,u, Tefrut, and Teb^uti — of which it would seem that the Greek form Thoth is an attempt to transliterate Tehut. There are, however, it may be remarked, no less than eighteen variants of the name found in Greek and Latin. I should thus myself be inclined to use the form Tefcut if it were permissible ; but of this I am not quite sure, as the weak-sounding though undoubtedly more common form Tehuti, is usually employed by scholars. As, however, Tehuti, to my ears at any rate, is not a very dignified sounding cognomen, I shall use the Greek form Thoth as being the more familiar to English readers.

Horapollo tells us that the ibis was the symbol of Thoth as the "master of the heart and reason in all men,"1 though why this was so must remain hidden in the mystery of the " sacred animals," which has not "N yet to my knowledge been in any way explained.

Thus the temple, as the dwelling of the God, was regarded as a model of the world, and its building as a copy of the world-building. And just as Thoth had ordained measure, number, and order in the universe, so was he the master-architect of temple-building and of all the mystic monuments. Thus, as the ordering world-mind, a text addresses Thoth as follows :