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

From this most interesting inscription copied from an ancient written document, we learn in the first place that in Egypt already, a good thousand years before the date of our " Poemandres," we have what the critical mind would call a distinct specimen of syncretism ; namely, an attempt to combine three God-myths, or traditions, into a single system. These, if we persist in taking a purely traditional view, are : (i.) The Hermopolitan myth of Thoth as the Logos-Demiurge, who also in it frequently appears as an aspect of the Supreme; (ii.) The doctrine of the Ptah-priests of Memphis, according to which Ptah as the Primal Deity creates himself and all gods and men, and fashions the world ; and (iii.) The Heliopolitan theology, in which A turn as the first of an ennead of gods unites his eight fellowgods in himself and is the Primal God and Primal Basis of all things.

In all this the scribe or prophet has employed very early conceptions : on the one hand, that the plurality of gods are but " members " of a One and Only God ; and on the other, that a sharply-defined and in some respect special God is similar to another more-general God in some particular attribute of his. Thus Atum is really the Primal God ; but the God-circle, his " Body " (or Pleroma), consists of Eight different Forms of Ptah. Atum has emanated them ; he is therefore " he who himself creates himself " ; but equally so has Ptah created Atum and himself. The most important Member of this universal Ptah-Being or Cosmic God is Ptah the Great, 2who is Heart and Tongue — the former as Horus, the latter as Thoth. Thoth proceeds into manifestation as Tongue or Word to accomplish the cosmic purpose ; but the Word is only the thought which has proceeded, or in a certain fashion emanated, out of the Person. Thoth and Horus are inseparably united with Ptah.

Reitzenstein thinks that the occasion for introducing the whole of this system into an exposition which otherwise deals with the Osiris-myth, was afforded by the parts played by Horus and Thoth in that myth. But it is evidently in itself a special system in which Thoth was the One God, the Word by whom all things were made.

All of this must be quite manifest to any careful reader, and therefore there is no reason for its further elaboration. But though we have recovered one specimen of this kind of syncretism only, it is not to be supposed that it was unusual ; indeed, it was a necessity in Egypt, where, beyond all other lands, the idea of a number of divinities united in one, each showing forth in separation some attribute dominantly, but in union possessing simultaneously the attributes of all the others, was the only key possible to a state of affairs where a plurality of gods existed side by side with the doctrines of the One and the AIL