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

"And Cronus [Ammon] going to the land of the South gave the whole of Egypt to the God Taaut to be his kingdom. All these things were first recorded by the Seven Sons of Sydyk, the Cabiri, and their eighth brother, Asclepius, as it was commanded them by the God Taaut." l

^Esculapius is here at once identified with the cult of the " Great Gods " (-Q3, KBE, Kdbirim), who were, according to the old Semitic tradition, the Sons of King Sydyk (? Melchizedec). The whole subject of the very ancient mysteries of these Great Gods is one of immense interest, but we must not be tempted to follow this alluring bye-path.2 Enough has been said to show that both Sanchuniathon and the writer of "The Shepherd " drew their accounts of cosmogony from the same sources, namely, the " Books of Thoth," or, in other words, the Egyptian mystery-tradition.

1 Op. tit., viii. p. 26.

2 The best source of information is the art. " Megaloi Theoi,"
in Reseller's Ausfuhrliches Lexikon der griechischen u. r&mischen
Mythologie, II. ii. (Leipzig, 1894-97).

VI

AN EGYPTIAN PROTOTYPE OF THE MAIN
FEATURES OF THE PCEMANDRES' COSMOGONY

THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE "PCEMANDRES"

ONE has only to read through the remains of the Trismegistic literature preserved to us to assure himself that the whole of it looked back to the Poemandres instruction as the most primitive form of the tradition in the language of Greece. The extant form of our " Pcemandres " sermon is clearly not the most primitive form ; but whatever that form was, it must have contained the cosmological part.

Now, if we regard this cosmogenesis as a purely literary compilation, the task of the higher criticism will be to try to sift out the various elements in it, and if possible to trace them to their sources.

But before making any attempt of this nature, it will be as well to consider the nature of the literary art of our document. It purports itself to be an apocalypse, or rather the record of an apocalyptic vision, and not a purely literary compilation from already existing literary sources. It declares itself to be the work of a seer and prophet and not of a scribe or commentator ; it claims to be an inspired document, a scripture, and not the work of a schoolman.

Of this class of writing we have very many examples in other scriptures, and it will be as well to consider

A PROTOTYPE OF THE PCEMANDREs' COSMOGONY 129 briefly the nature of such documents. In the original form of apocalypses we do not as a rule find that prior formal literary material is used — that is to say, we do not find that previously existing written sources are incorporated ; what we do find is that in almost every case the seer uses the forms and terms of previously existing ideas to express what he sees. These forms and terms are found in already existing written and oral traditions, and the prophetical writer is compelled to use the thought-language of his own mind and of that of his age to express himself. This, however, does not negate the possibility of his having seen a true vision, of his having been inspired.

It is evident that whoever wrote the " Pcemandres " must have been saturated with the religious, mystical, philosophic, and scientific thought of his age, clothed in the forms of the thought-language of his day ; and it is also clear that whatever " newness " there may have been in him, was owing to the nature of the " touch " of inspiration he had received. This striking of a new keynote, as it were, in his inner nature, enabled him to regroup and reconstruct the previous ideas he had imbibed from his studies.

A PROTOTYPE OF ITS COSMOGENESIS

Now as far as our cosmogenesis is concerned, it has not yet been found possible to trace the exact verbal forms of its elements to any precise literary sources, but it has been found possible to point to written sources which contain similar ideas ; and not only so, but with regard to the main features of it, a distinct prototype has been found in Egypt itself. This discovery is due to Eeitzenstein (pp.59 ff.),and the prototype is to be found in an Egyptian inscription in the British

.VOL. i. 9

Museum, which was first read correctly and interpreted by Dr J. H. Breasted. * Before using it, however, Eeitzenstein got his colleague Professor Spiegelberg to go through it; and again when Maspero, in reviewing2 Breasted's work, had further confirmed the view of it which Eeitzenstein had in his mind, Spiegelberg again revised certain points in the translation owing to Maspero's suggestions.