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

If, however, we seek for historical allusions, we may perhaps be permitted to conclude that the first Hermes, that is to say the first priesthood among the Egyptians, used a sacred language, or in other words a language which in the time of the second Hermes, or second priesthood, was no longer spoken. It was presumably archaic Egyptian. The two successions of priests and prophets were separated by a " flood." This " flood " was presumably connected with, if not the origin of, the flood of which Solon heard from the priest of Sai's, which happened some nine thousand years before his time, and of which we have considerable information given us in the Timceus and Critias of Plato.1 The Good Angel is the same as the Mind, as we learn from the Trismegistic literature, and was regarded as the father of Hermes Trismegistus. This seems to be a figurative way of saying that the archaic civilisation of Egypt before the flood, which presumably swept over the country when the Atlantic Island went down, was regarded as one of great excellence. It was the time of the Gods-! or Divine Kings or Demi-Gods, whose wisdom was handed on in mystic tradition, or revived into some semblance of its former greatness, by the lesser descendants of that race who returned from exile, or reincarnated on earth, to take charge of the new populations who had gradually returned to the lower Nile plains after the flood had subsided.

Thus we have three epochs of tradition of the Egyptian mystery-cultus : (i.) The first Thoth or Agathodaimon, the original tradition preserved in the sacred language and character in the stone monuments of the

1 See my article on " The Sibyl and her Oracles," in The Theosophical Review, vol. xxii. pp. 399 S. See also the passage preserved from the Ethiopian History of Marcellua by Proclus in his commentary on the Timceus of Plato ; Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 233.

Seriadic land, presumably the Egypt prior to the Atlantic flood ; (ii.) the second Thoth, the Thricegreatest, the mystery-school after the period of the great inundation, whose records and doctrines were preserved not only in inscriptions but also in MSS., still written in the sacred character, but in the Egyptian tongue as it was spoken after the people reoccupied the country ; and (iii.) Tat, the priesthood of Manetho's day, and presumably of some centuries prior to his time, who spoke a yet later form of Egyptian, and from whose demotic translations further translations or paraphrases were made in Greek.

Is " SOTHIS " A FORGERY ?

This natural line of descent of the fundamental doctrines in the tradition of the Trismegistic literature, however, is scouted by encyclopsedisrn, which would have our sermons to be Neoplatonic forgeries, though on what slender grounds it bases its view we have already seen. It will now be interesting to see how the testimony of Manetho is disposed of. Our encyclopaedias tell us that the book Sothis is obviously a late forgery ; parrot-like they repeat this statement ; but nowhere in them do we find a single word of proof brought forward. Let us then see whether any scholars have dealt with the problem outside of encyclopsedism. Very little work has been done on the subject. The fullest summary of the position is given by C. Miiller.1 Muller bases his assertion on Bockh,2 and Bockh on Letronne.3

1 Frag. Hist. Grcec., ut sup. cit., p. 512.

2 A. Bockh, Manetho und die Hundsternperiode : em Beitrag sur Geschichte der Pharaonen,'pp. 14-17 (Berlin, 1845).

3 M. Letronne, Recueil des Inscriptions grecques et latines de
I'&jypte, torn, i., pp. 206, 280 ff. (Paris, 1842).

The arguments are as follows: (i.) That the term " venerable " (o-e/Sao-ro?) is not used prior to the time of the Koman emperors ; (ii.) that Egypt knows no flood ; (iii.) that the ancient mythology of Egypt knows no first and second Hermes; (iv.) that Egypt has no Seriadic land ; (v.) that the term " Trismegistus " is of late use.

THE ABGUMENTS OF ENOYCLOPJEDISM REFUTED