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

Adam has been substituted for the First Man, in the sense of our " Shepherd " tradition ; and the two kinds of monuments (which Josephus seems to regard as two single structures and not as relating to two classes of buildings) may refer to the brick structures and temples of that age, and to specially constructed and more lasting monuments of stone — perhaps rock-cut temples, or the most ancient pyramids. I have also asked myself the question as to whether there may not be some clue concealed in this " brick monument " reference to the puzzling statement in the Babylonian Talmud1 that Jesus set up a " brick-bat " and worshipped it. Jesus is said in the Talmud Jeschu Stories to have " learned magic in Egypt," and the magical wisdom of ancient Egypt is here said to have been recorded on monuments of brick.2

Reitzenstein (p. 183), after pointing to the similarity of tradition as to the Seriadic Land contained in Josephus, and in what he characterises as Pseudo-Manetho,3 adds the interesting information that the Seriadic Land is borne witness to by an inscription as being the home and native land of Isis ; indeed, the Goddess herself is given the name of Neilotis or Seirias ; she is the fertile earth and is Egypt.1

To continue, then, with the consideration of the arguments urged against the authenticity of Manetho's Sothis. With regard to objection (iv.), we have given very good reasons for concluding that so far from Egypt " knowing no Seriadic land," Egypt was the Seriadic Land par excellence, and the Books of Hermes 2were the direct descendants of the archaic stone monuments of that land. And further, we have shown that our Trismegistic writings are a step or two further down in the same line of descent. The whole hangs together logically and naturally.

We have thus removed four of the five props which support the hypothesis of forgery with regard to the Sothis document. Let us now see whether the remaining prop will bear the weight of the structure.

(v.) We are told that the term " Trismegistus " is of late use. This assertion is based entirely on the hypothesis that all our extant Trismegistic writings are Neoplatonic forgeries of the third or at best the second century, before which time the name Thrice-greatest was never heard of. The term Trismegistus must go as far back as the earliest of these writings, at any rate, and where we must place that we shall see at the end of our investigations.

That the peculiar designation Trismegistus was known in the first century even among the Romans, however, is evident from the famous Latin epigrammatist Martial (v. 24), who in singing the praise of one Hermes, a famous gladiator, brings his paean to a climax with the line :

A verse which an anonymous translator in 1695 freely renders as :