Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

All of this seems to indicate that in his introduction he was using for his own purposes some tradition about the ancient Thoth-literature that was current in his time. A form of this tradition was also made use of by Philo of Byblus in the first century, when he makes the Phoenician priest Sanchuniathon discover the origin of the Phoenician cosmogony and mystery-teaching in the Books of Taautos, "whom the Egyptian called Thoyth, the Alexandrians Thoth, and the Greeks changed into Hermes."

Sanchuniathon, he says, "having come across the secret writings that had been discovered and brought from the shrines of the Temples of Ammon, — compositions which were not known to all, — practised by himself the science (rtjv imdOrjo-iv) of all things." 2

Philo also professes to quote from one of the earliest priests of Phoenicia, a certain Thabion, who is said apparently to have got his information from a writing of the Seven Kabiri, and of Asclepius, the pupil of Taautos. This Thabion asserted that Taautos was made King of Egypt by Kronos — that is, Ammon.3

1 Of. R 269. 2 Apt Euseb., Prcep. Ev., I. ix. 29.

3 Ibid., I. x. 38, 39.

Here we are evidently in contact with certain traditions with regard to Thoth-Hermes, his ancestors and pupils, and secret writings. Presumably many such traditions were floating about, and were used according to the fancy and taste of Hellenistic writers for their own purposes.

But there was also another tradition concerning a certain King Ammon, used in one form by Jamblichus, when he writes :

" It was Hermes who first taught this Path [sc. the Way up to God]. And Bitys,1 the Prophet, translated [his teachings concerning it] for King Ammon, discovering them in the inner temple in an inscription in the sacred characters at Sai's in Egypt." 2

What our author and Jamblichus have in common is that there were certain secret teachings of Hermes in the Sacred Language of Ancient Egypt hidden away in the inner shrines of the temples, and that these were translated into the current Egyptian language of the time for a certain King Ammon.

It must, then, have been some tradition of this kind that our author or writer had in mind ; he would have it believed that he was writing in the style or according to the model of a certain literature.

Who this King Ammon was can only be guessed at ; but to my mind it is probable that the " translations " of Bitys were made in connection with the translation activity of Manetho for King Ptolemy, and this translation was into Greek. Our author, however, would refer it to some Egyptain King, and so seek to invoke the authority of a high antiquity for the treatise he was putting into circulation.

1 Of. Zosimus (§ 8). 2 De Myst., viii. 5.

A SPECULATION AS TO DATE

5. What seems to differentiate our treatise from the rest of the tractates, is the prominence its author gives to the doctrine of the Sun as Demiurgic Orderer of all things. This so to speak pantheistic form of Sunworship is peculiarly Egyptian.1

Now if we remember the disdainful way in which Greek " philosophizing " is spoken of in the introduction, we may be tempted to take the sentence, "And if there be any essence which the mind alone can grasp " (§ 6), as a somewhat patronizing reference to the Intelligible World of Greek Philosophy, as also the analogy in § 12 ; but when we turn to §§17 and 18 the exposition fully adopts the doctrine of the Intelligible and Sensible Worlds. This is so irreconcilable a contradiction that one is almost compelled to believe that the introduction is by another hand altogether, and that our sermon proper begins with § 3.

But even so, the sermon is addressed to some King or other — "The Perfect Sermon to the King" of Lactantius — without any further qualification. Who, however, this King may have been historically must remain a matter of pure conjecture.

7. When, then, Reitzenstein, pointing to § 7, says that the symbolism of the Sun as a charioteer wearing a crown of rays corresponds with that of the pictures of the Aurelian Sun-god, and adds further it is the Roman Empire-god of the third century, we are quite prepared to acknowledge a similarity of symbolism. But if it is intended to suggest that, therefore, we are to date our document by this similarity, it must be admitted that the indications are far too vague; for the symbolism of the Sun as the ray-crowned charioteer

1 Cf. K 198, 1 ; and also Comment on § 17 below.

is fundamental with the cult of Mithras, and is found in Greece long before the Aurelian period.