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The clue of Griffiths. The earliest Trismegistic literature
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THE CLUE OF GRIFFITHS
So I wrote in November 1899, when the major part of this chapter was first published in The Theosophical Review. Shortly afterwards, however, I came across an entirely new clue. In his Stories of the High Priests of Memphis: the Sethon of Herodotus and the Demotic Tales of Khamuas (Oxford, 1900), F. Ll. Griffiths presents us with the translation of an exceedingly interesting demotic text, found on the verso of two Greek
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documents, the contents of which prove them to be official land-registers of the seventh year of Claudius (A. D. 46-47). There is also “strong evidence for attributing the demotic text to some time within thirty years from that date” (p. 41). So much for the copy of the original; but what of its contents? As they belong to the most important cycle of folk-tates of Egypt, it is to be assumed that their form and substance is old.
In this papyrus we are told that on an occasion of great need when the Pharaoh of Egypt was being overcome at a distance by the sorceries of the Ethiopian enchanters, he was saved, and the magic of the Black Ones sent back upon them, by a certain Hor, son of Pa-neshe, most learned in the Books. Before his great trial of strength with the Ethiopian spells, we read of this Hor that:
“He entered the temple of Khmû n; he made his offerings and his libations before Thoth, the Eight-times-great, the Lord of Khmû n, the Great God” (p. 58).
To this Griffiths appends the following note:
“‘Thoth, eight times great’; the remains of the signs indicate this reading. The title, which here appears for the first time in Egyptian literature, is the equivalent of τ ρ ι σ μ έ γ ι σ τ ο ς [thrice-greatest], a late epithet first used about the date of this MS. 1 ὁ is μ έ γ α ς [great], which we may represent algebraically by a; ὁ ὁ (2a), a common title of Thoth in late hieroglyphic, is μ έ γ α ς κ α ὶ μ έ γ α ς [great and great] on the Rosetta Stone, but probably represents μ έ γ ι σ τ ο ς [greatest], and 8ὁ is therefore τ ρ ι σ μ έ γ ι σ τ ο ς [thrice-greatest], i. e. (2a)³. The famous epithet of Hermes which has puzzled commentators thus displays its mathematical formation. 6ὁ = 3(2a) would not fill the
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lacuna on the papyrus, nor would it give the obviously intended reference to the name of Thoth’s city, ‘the Eighth, ’ and the mythological interpretation of that name. ”
The mythological interpretation of that name, namely Khmun (Khemen-nw), which Budge transliterates Khemennu, Griffiths says is “the eighth city, ” i. e. “the eighth in Upper Egypt going up the river. ” 1
We are loth to deprive any one of a so fair adaptation to environment in the evolution of purely physical interpretation; but we are afraid that our readers will have already learned for themselves that Khemennu was the City of the Eight, the City of the Ogdoad, and will expect some less mundane explanation of the name; not that we altogether object to Khemennu being the “Eighth City up the River, ” if that river is interpreted as the Celestial Nile on which the soul of the initiated sailed in the solar boat.
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Reitzenstein then is wrong in supposing (p. 117, n. 6) that Griffiths connects the honorific title Trismegistus with the eight cynocephali who form the paut of Thoth; but we may do so.
The nature of this symbolic Ogdoad is most clearly seen in the inscription of Dê r-el-Bahari, of the time of the Twenty-second Dynasty which Maspero has lately published. 2
In it the Osirified says to the Supreme:
“I am One who becomes Two; I am Two who becomes Four; I am Four who becomes Eight; I am the One after that. ”
So also in the first Hermes Prayer, quoted in a preceding chapter, addressed to Hermes as Agathodaimon,
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[paragraph continues] Thoth is he “whom the Eight Wardens guard. ”
These Eight, we may perhaps be permitted to speculate, were generated Two from One, ȧ ā ȧ ā, Greatest; Four from Two, Twice-greatest; Eight from Four, Thrice-greatest.
Such a combination would specially commend itself to men trained in Pythagorean mathematical symbols, as were doubtless many who took part in compiling the Egyptian Hellenistic theosophical literature.
I, therefore, conclude that the honorific title Thrice-greatest can very well go back to early Ptolemaic times; and therefore, as far as I can see, the authenticity of Manetho’s Sothis stands unimpugned as far as any arguments so far brought against it are concerned. I therefore regard the quotation of Syncellus as a most valuable piece of information in tracing the genesis of the Trismegistic literature. Whether or not any of our extant sermons can be placed among these earlier forms of this literature will be discussed later on.
THE EARLIEST TRISMEGISTIC LITERATURE
That, however, literature of a similar nature existed in early and middle Ptolemaic times we have already seen from the material adduced at the beginning of this chapter; we may therefore fitly conclude it by pointing out that in later Ptolemaic times, and down to the first century A. D., we find in the same literature specimens of cosmogenesis closely resembling the main elements of the world-formation given in our “Shepherd” treatise.
An excellent example is that of the fragmentary cosmogonical poem, the text of which Reitzenstein has printed in his Zwei religionsgesch. Fragen, to which we
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have already referred. This poem Reitzenstein (p. 92) dates as belonging to the first century B. C., though it may probably be earlier; it declares itself to be of the Hermes tradition, both in its statement about itself and also in the fact that it is Hermes, the Beloved Son of Zeus, who is the Logos-Creator of the cosmos, and also the progenitor or “father” of the prophet-poet who writes the vision.
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