Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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2 See the last chapter of the book from which the following passage is quoted. See also lamblichus, De Mysteriis, cap. ii., who in a very clear statement of the sources of his information, historian Ammianus Marcellinus,1 the friend of the Emperor Julian, has preserved for us a peculiarity of the construction of some of these pyramids or temples which is of interest. The passage to which we refer runs as follows :
"There are certain underground galleries and passages full of windings, which, it is said, the adepts in the ancient rites (knowing that the flood was coming, and fearing that the memory of the sacred ceremonies would be obliterated) constructed in various places, distributed in the interior [of the buildings], which were mined out with great labour. And levelling the walls,2 they engraved on them numerous kinds of birds and animals, and countless varieties [of creatures] of another world, which they called hieroglyphic characters."3
We are thus told of another peculiarity of some of the Seriadic monuments, and of the " Books preserved from the Flood " of which there were so many traditions. These are the records to which Sanchuniathon and Manetho make reference.
THE SONS OF SETH-HERMKS
The Egyptian account is straightforward enough ; but when Josephus, following the traditional practice of his race in exploiting the myths of more ancient nations for the purpose of building up Jewish history — for the and the method of treating the numerous points raised by Porphyry, says : " And if thou proposest any philosophical problem, we will resolve it for thee according to the ancient monuments of Hermes, on the thorough study of which Plato, and prior to him Pythagoras, founded their philosophy."
1 Who flourished in the early second half of the fourth century A.D.
2 The passages and chambers being hewn out of the solid rock.
3 Ammiani Marcellini Rerum, Gestarum Libri qui super sunt, xxii. xv. 30 ; ed. V. Gardthausen (Leipzig, 1874), p. 301.
Mosaic Books supply innumerable examples of the working-up of elements which the Jews found in the records of older nations — runs away with the idea that Seth (the Egyptian Sirius) was the Biblical patriarch Seth, the Jewish " antiquarian " enters on a path of romance and not of history. Tis thus he uses the Egyptian Seriadic tradition for his own purposes :
"All of these [the Sons of Seth] being of good disposition, dwelt happily together in the same country free from quarrels, without any misfortune happening to the end of their lives. The [great] subject of their studies was that wisdom which deals with the heavenly bodies and their orderly arrangement. In order that their discoveries should not be lost to mankind and perish before they became known (for Adam had foretold that there would be an alternate disappearance of all things l by the force of fire and owing to the strength and mass of water) — they made two monuments,2 one of brick and the other of stone, and on each of them engraved their discoveries. In order that if it should happen that the brick one should be done away with by the heavy downpour,3 the stone one might survive and let men know what was inscribed upon it, at the same time informing them that a brick one had also been made by them. And it remains even to the present day in the Siriad land." 4
This passage is of great interest not only as affording a very good example of the method of inventing Jewish " antiquities," but also as permitting us to recover the outlines of the original Egyptian account which Josephus purloined and adapted. The Sons of Seth were the initiates of the archaic priesthood of the First Hermes.
3 ^irojujSpfay, a downpour or flood of rain.
4 Josephus, Antt., I. ii. ; Cory's An. Fragg., pp. 171, 172.