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

8. And [there] shall it see the Picture 2 that both Bitos hath described, and thrice-great Plato, and ten-thousandtimes-great Hermes, for Thdythos translated3 it into the first sacred4 tongue, — Thoth the First Man, the Interpreter of all things which exist, and the Namemaker 5 for all embodied things.6

1 Cf. S., § 9 in the Naassene Document.

2 irlvauea — or tablet. 3 Lit. translates.

4 Priestly or hieratic. With this compare Syncellus' (Chron., xl.) quotation, from Manetho's Sothis, which declares that the first monuments recording the wisdom-mystery of most ancient Egypt " were engraved in the sacred language by Thoth, the first Hermes ; after the Flood they were translated from the sacred language into the common tongue." Cf. vol. i., ch. v., on " Hermes according to Manetho."

5 ovo/jLaToiroits, — referring specially to the making of names or words corresponding to natural cries and sounds. Compare the Adam of Genesis.

6 Cf. Plato, Philebus, 18 B : " Some god, or rather some godlike man, who in Egypt their tradition says was Theuth, observing that sound was infinite, first distinguished in this infinity a certain number of pure sounds [or vowels], and then other letters [or sound elements] which have sound, but are not pure sounds [the semi-vowels] ; these two exist [each] in a definite number ; and lastly he distinguished a third class of letters, which we now call mutes ; and divided these, and likewise the two other classes of vowels and semi-vowels, into their individual elements, and told the number of them, and gave to each and all of them the names of letters." (Cf. Jowett's Trans., 3rd ed., iv. 583, 584.)

According to the number-system of the Gnostic Marcus, there are : seven vowels, eight semi- vowels, and nine mutes (F. F. F., p. 368). It is also of interest to notice that these elements of sound are applied to what Marcus calls the " Configuration of the Element" — ? Sound — (rb <TX^M« r°" (rroixtiov) ; they constitute the

THE LIBRARIES OF THE PTOLEMIES

9. The Chaldaeans and Parthians and Medes and Hebrews call Him1 Adam, which is by interpretation virgin Earth, and blood-red2 Earth, and fiery3 Earth, and fleshly Earth.

10. And these indications were found in the bookcollections 4 of the Ptolemies, which they stored away in every temple, and especially in the Serapeum, when they invited Asenas, the chief priest of Jerusalem, to send a "Hermes,"5 who translated the whole of the Hebrew into Greek and Egyptian.6

11. So the First Man is called by us Thoyth and by them Adam, — not giving His [true] name in the Language of the Angels, but naming Him symbolically according to His Body by the four elements [or letters] out of His whole Sphere,7 whereas his Inner Man, the

Glyph (or Character, or Impression, or Expression) of the Figure (or Diagram) of the Man of Truth. In the phrase " Glyph of the Figure " (6 xopewcT^p rov ypdfjifAaTos), the word ypd^a means either (i) a letter of the alphabet, or (ii) a note of music, or (iii) a mathematical figure or diagram (ibid., p. 367). Is there then any connection between the Pinax of Bitos and the Diagram of the Ophites referred to by Celsus 1 1 Sc. the First Man. 2 Or of the nature of blood.

3 Codd. TTvpet — ? irvpia.

4 Or libraries. 5 That is, a learned priest or scribe.

6 Much translation of this kind was done at that period. Compare the Arabic translation of a " Book of Ostanes " (Berthelot, La Ghimie au Moyen Age, iii. 121), in which an old inscription on an Egyptian stele is quoted : " Have you not heard the story that a certain philosopher [i.e. Egyptian priest] wrote to the Magi in Persia, saying : ' I have found a copy of a book of the ancient sages ; but as the book is written in Persian, I cannot read it. Send me then one of your wise men who can read for me the book I have found "? " R. 363.

7 Presumably referring to the whole Body of the Heavenly Man, to whose Limbs all the letters were assigned by Marcus.