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

In the astronomical science of the Egyptians the most conspicuous solar system near our own, represented in the heavens by the brilliant Sirius, was of supreme interest. Cycles of immense importance were determined by it, and it entered into the highest mysticism of Egyptian initiation. Sirius was, as it were, the guardian star of Egypt. Now ancient Egypt was a sacred land, laid out in its nomes or provinces according to the heavens, having centres in its body corresponding to the centres or ganglia of the heavens. As the Hindus had a Heavenly Ganges (Akasha-Ganga) and an earthly Ganges, so had the heavens a Celestial

1 Ursin, De Zoroastre, etc., p. 73.

2 For a permutation of the elements in this genealogy, in the interests of Heliopolis, see Varro, De Genie Pop. Rom., as quoted by Augustine in De Giv. Dei, xviii. 3 and 8.

Nile, and Egypt a physical Nile, the life-giver of the land. The yearly inundation, which meant and means everything for ancient and modern Khem, was observed with great minuteness, and recorded with immense pains, the basis of its cycle being the Sothiac or Siriadic ; Sirius (Seirios) being called in Greek transliteration Sothis and Seth (Eg. Sept). What more natural name, then, to give to the country than the Seriadic Land ?

The Nile records in ancient times were self-registered by pyramids, obelisks, and temples, and in later times nearly all monuments were built according to the type of the masonic instruments of the Egyptian astrogeological science. This science has been studied in our own times by an Egyptian, and the results of his researches have been printed " for private circulation," and a copy of them is to be found in the British Museum. In his Preface the author writes as follows : l

" The astrogeological science gave birth to a monumental system, by means of which the fruits of the accumulated observations and experience of the human race have been preserved, outliving writings, inscriptions, traditions, and nationalities. The principal monuments had imparted to them the essential property of being autochronous landmarks of a geochronological nature. Many of them recorded, hydromathematically, the knowledge in astronomy, in geography, and in the dimension and figure of the earth obtained in their respective epochs. They were Siriadic monuments, because their magistral lines were projected to the scale

1 Hekekyan Bey, C. E., A Treatise on the Chronology of Siriadic Monuments, demonstrating that the Egyptian Dynasties of Manetho are Records of Astrogeological Nile Observations which have been continued to the Present Time — Preface, p. v. (London, 1863). The book deserves careful study, and cannot be hastily set aside with the impatience of prejudice.

of the revolutions of the cycles of the star Surios (sic) in terms of the standard astrogeological cubit."

Doubtless our author flogs his theory too severely, as all such writers do ; but nilometry and the rest was certainly one of the most important branches of the priestly science.

THE STELAE OF HERMES

But before we deal with the last objection urged against the authenticity of Manetho's Sothis, we will add a few words more concerning these Seriadic monuments known in antiquity as the Stelae of Hermes or of Seth, and erroneously spoken of in Latin and English as the " Columns " or " Pillars " of Hermes.

The general reader may perhaps be puzzled at the variety of spelling of the name of the star, but he should recollect that the difficulties of transliteration from one language to another are always great, and especially so when the two languages belong to different families. Thus we find the variants of Tehuti, the Egyptian name of Hermes, transliterated in no less than nineteen various forms in Greek and two in Latin — such as Thoyth, Thath, Tat, etc.1 Similarly we find the name of the famous Indian lawgiver transliterated into English as Manu, Menu, Menoo, etc.

With regard to these "Mercurii Columnse," it was the common tradition, as we have already pointed out, that Pythagoras, Plato, and others got their wisdom from these columns, that is to say, monuments.2 The

1 See Pietschmann, op. tit., pp. 31, 32; also Spiegelberg, Eecueil des Travaux relatifs d la Philologie et a VArcheologie fyyptiennes et assyriennes, xxiii. 199. R 117, n. 1.