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

The information given by Jamblichus is precise ; they were translations, but instead of a literal rendering, the translators used the usual phraseology of the Greek philosophical writers.

Jamblichus then goes on to say that physical astronomy and physical research generally were but a very small part of the Hermaic science, by no means the most important.

For " the Egyptians deny that physics are everything ; on the contrary they distinguish both the life of the soul and the life of the mind from nature,2 not only in the case of the cosmos but also in man. They first posit Mind and Reason (Logos) as having a being peculiar to themselves, and then they tell us that the world of becoming [or generation] is created. As Forefather of all beings in generation they place the Creator, and are acquainted with the Life-giving Power which is prior to the celestial spaces and permeates them. Above the universe they place Pure Mind ; this for the universe as a whole is one and undivided, but it is variously manifested in the several spheres.3 And they do not speculate about these things with the unassisted reason, but they announce that by the divine art of their priestly science4 they reach higher and more 2universal states [of consciousness] above the [Seven Spheres of] Destiny, ascending to God the Creator,1 and that too without using any material means, or any other [material] assistance than the" observation of a suitable opportunity.

" It was Hermes who first taught this Path.2 And Bitys, the prophet, translated [his teachings concerning it] for King Ammon,3 discovering them in the inner temple4 in an inscription in the sacred characters at Sai's in Egypt. [From these writings it was that Bitys] handed on the tradition of the Name of God, as ' That which pervadeth the whole universe/"5

" As to the Good Itself [the Egyptians] regard It in Its relation to the Divine as the God that transcends all thought, and in Its relation to man as the at-onement with Him — a doctrine which Bitys translated from the Hermaic Books." 6

From these two passages we learn that the ancient doctrine of Hermes concerning the Path, which is the keynote of our Trismegistic tracts, was to be found either in inscriptions in the sacred script in the secret chambers of the temples, into which no uninitiated person was ever permitted to enter, or in " books," also in the sacred script ; that these had never been translated until the reign of King Arnmon.7 But what are we to understand by translated ? Into Greek ? Not necessarily, but more probably interpreted from the 3hieroglyphic symbols into the Egyptian vernacular and written in the demotic character. The term used (Siep/uLtjveveiv) clearly bears this sense ; whereas if translation from Egyptian into Greek had been intended, we should presumably have had the same word (imeTaypd<peiv) employed which Jamblichus uses when speaking of the Hermetic books that had been read by Porphyry. Eeitzenstein (p. 108), however, has apparently no doubt that the writings of Bitys were in Greek, and that these writings lay before Jamblichus and were the only source of his information. But I cannot be certain that this is the meaning of the Greek.

We have rather, according to my view, probably two strata of " translation " — from hieroglyphic into demotic, from demotic into Greek. As to Bitys, • e know nothing more definite than Jamblichus tells us. Perhaps he was the first to translate from the sacred hieroglyphs into the vulgar tongue and script ; and by that we mean the first to break the ancient rule and write down in the vulgar characters those holy sermons and treatises which previously had never before been inscribed in any but the most sacred characters. We are not, however, to suppose that Bitys was the only one to do this.