Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
1 The life or breath of the Creator.
2 Sc. the water of the Great Green.
3 Paut, sphere, or group, or company, or hierarchy, or pleroma, — here an Ogdoad.
4 Namely, Thoth and Horus.
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and tongue came into being through him. (It is Atum) who brings forth his being out of every body and out of every mouth of all the gods. All men, all quadrupeds, all creeping things live through his thinking and uttering whatsoever he will
§ 2, 1. 55. His god-circle is before him ; he is teeth [and] lips, vessels [and] hands. Atum (is in his) godcircle ; Atum is in his vessels, in his hands ; the godcircle is also teeth and lips in that mouth which hath uttered the name of everything, and out of which Shu and Tefnut have proceeded.1
/. 56. Then the god-circle organised the seeing of the eye, the hearing of the ear, the smelling of the nose, wherewith they made the desire of the heart to arise. And this [heart] it is which accomplishes every desire, but it is the tongue which repeats 2 what the heart desires.
§ 3. He (Ptah) gives existence8 unto all gods, to Atum and his god-circle, for every god-word* comes into existence through the desire of the heart and the command of the tongue.
1. 57. He makes the Tea . . . ; he makes all nourishment and all offerings 5 with this word ; he makes what is loved and what is hated. He gives life to the pious, death to the impious. He makes every fabric, and every fabrication.
1 That is, the heart (Horus) rules action by fingers (and toes), by means of the ducts or vessels (arteries, veins, and nerves) leading to them, and all that these mean on the hidden side of things ; while the tongue in the mouth (Thoth), by means of teeth and lips, is the organ of speech, or intelligent or meaning utterance.
2 This appears to be a mistranslation ; it seems by what follows to mean " commands " or " gives expression to."
3 Not being ; that is, brings them into manifestation. He is the Demiurge.
4 R. glosses this as hieroglyph ; but it should perhaps mean " word of the language of the gods " — the language shown by action in the world.
5 That is to say, apparently, the fruit of actions on which gods and men feed. Of. Hermes-Prayer, II. 2, where Hermes is said to " collect the nourishment of gods and men."
I. 58. The doing of the arms, the going of the feet, the movement of all limbs, is accomplished by the utterance of the word, because of the desire of the heart, [the word] which comes from the tongue and effects the whole of all things. So arises the teaching: Atum has made the gods to become Ptah Tatenen1 so soon as the gods come into existence. All things proceed from him : sacrifice and food as well as oblation and all fair things.
§ 4, I. 59. He is Thoth the Wise, whose power is greater than that of the other gods. He (Thoth) at-oned himself with Ptah, after he had brought forth all things and all god-words;2 after that he had fashioned the gods, had made the cities, settled the nomes, established the gods in their shrines,
I. 60. When he had ordained their sacrifices, founded their shrines, and had made statues of [?for] their bodies for their contentment.
§ 5. If the gods enter into their body, so is he (Ptah) in every wood, in every jewel, in every metal.3 All things thrive after him if they [the gods] are there. To him all gods and their Tea's make oblation, uniting and binding themselves together [for him who is] Lord of the Two Lands.4
1 That is, as we have seen above, Ptah as the Demiurgic Power.
2 Hieroglyphics ; showing that the oldest hieroglyphics were symbols of the words of action — that is to say, modes of expression of being in action.
3 Lit., copper.
4 That is, the worlds of gods, or immortals, and of men, or mortals. But Reitzenstein says : " Thus the God of Memphis [i.e. Ptah] is the divinity or ' the God ' of all Egypt " — meaning thereby the physical upper and lower lands ; but I prefer a wider sense.
With these words the special theological system attached to the fourth person of Ptah is concluded, and the text returns to the Osiris-myth.
EGYPTIAN SYNCRETISM 1000 B.C.