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Imhotep-imuth-asclepius. ThĀth-tat. The incarnations of Thoth
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IMHOTEP-IMUTH-ASCLEPIUS
Moreover the Egyptian texts prove that besides Nefer-Tem still another Son of Ptaḥ was regarded as the third member of the Memphitic Triad. This Son was called I-em-ḥ etep (or Imḥ otep), whom the Greeks called Imouthē s or Imuth, and equated him with their Asclepius.
The name I-em-ḥ etep means “He who cometh in Peace, ” and is very appropriate to the God who brought the knowledge of Healing to mankind; but I-em-ḥ etep, though specially the God of medicine, was also the God of study and learning in general.
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“As a God of learning he partook of some of the attributes of Thoth, and he was supposed to take the place of this God in the performance of funeral ceremonies, and in superintending the embalming of the dead; in later times he absorbed the duties of Thoth as ‘Scribe of the Gods, ’ and the authorship of the words of power which protected the dead from enemies of every kind in the Underworld was ascribed to him” (ib., 522, 523).
In the “Ritual of Embalmment” 1 it is said to the Deceased: “Thy soul uniteth itself to I-em-ḥ etep whilst thou art in the funeral valley. ”
The oldest shrine of the God was situated close to Memphis, and was called the “Temple of I-em-ḥ etep, the Son of Ptaḥ, ” which the Greeks called the Asclē pieion.
Under Ptolemy IV., Philopator (222-205 B. C. ), a temple was built to I-em-ḥ etep on the Island of Philæ, and from the hieroglyphic inscriptions we learn that the God was called: “Great One, Son of Ptaḥ, the Creative God, made by Thenen, begotten by him and beloved by him, the God of divine forms in the temples, who giveth life to all men, the Mighty One of wonders, the Maker of times [? ], who cometh unto him that calleth upon him wheresoever he may be, who giveth sons to the childless, the wisest and most learned one, the image and likeness of Thoth the Wise. ” 2
Imḥ otep-Asclepius was thus the “image and likeness of Thoth the Wise, ” even as Nefer-Tem was
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[paragraph continues] Young Thoth. Here we have precisely the distinction drawn between Asclepius and Tat in our Trismegistic literature; Asclepius was trained in all philosophy, Tat was young and as yet untrained.
“I-em-ḥ etep, ” concludes Budge, “was the God who sent sleep to those who were suffering and in pain, and those who were afflicted with any kind of disease formed his special charge; he was the Good Physician both of Gods and men, and he healed the bodies of mortals during life, and superintended the arrangements for the preservation of the same after death. . . . He was certainly the God of physicians and of all those who were occupied with the mingled science of medicine and magic; and when we remember that several of the first Kings of the Early Empire are declared by Manetho, whose statements have been supported by the evidence of the papyri, to have written, i. e. caused to be edited, works on medicine, it is clear that the God of medicine was in Memphis as old as the archaic period” (ib., 524).
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So much for the more important information that Budge has to offer us on the subject of Asclepius-Imuth from the side of pure Egyptian tradition—if we can use such a phrase of that tradition as strained through the sieve of almost purely physical interpretation. 1
THĀ TH-TAT
And now let us turn to Reitzenstein and his instructive Dissertation, “Hermes u. Schü ler” (pp. 117 ff. ).
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Unquestionably the most general form of sermon found in the remains of our Trismegistic literature is that of instruction to Tat the “Son” of Hermes, who is “Father” and Initiator. Of these instructions two Corpora existed, namely, “The General Sermons” and “The Expository Sermons. ”
The name Tat is, of course, a variant of Thoth (Teḥ ut); but whereas Hermes himself is always in such sermons characterised as Thrice-greatest, Tat has not yet reached to this grade of mastership; he is still “Young. ”
The name “Tat” occurs in one of the prayers in the Magic Papyri, part of which is undecipherable, and can only be translated by following the conjecture of Reitzenstein (p. 117, n. 6).
“Show thyself unto me in thy prophetic power O God of mighty mind, Thrice-great Hermes! Let him who rules the four regions of the Heavens and the four foundations of the Earth appear. Be present unto me O thou in Heaven, be present unto me thou from the Egg. . . . Speak, the Two Gods also are round thee, —the one God is called Thā th and the other Haf. ” 1
Spiegelberg equates Haf with Ḥ pj, the “Genius of the Dead” who appears coupled with Thoth in a Coptic Magic Papyrus of the second century A. D., 2 where Isis speaks of “my father Ape-Thoth. ” This thus seems to identify Haf with Anubis—that is, Harmanup or Horus as Anubis. And Anubis, as Hermes-Tat, was considered in Egyptian tradition to be a composer of sacred scripture. 3
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THE INCARNATIONS OF THOTH
The prayer just cited appears to put us into contact with the atmosphere of some inner mysteries of spiritual instruction. The God or Spiritual Master contains in himself his disciple, or a duad or triad of disciples; the relationship of Master and disciple is of the most intimate nature; not only is it of that of father to son, but of mother to child—for the disciple is born in the womb of the Master Presence. The disciple is as it were his ka.
Thus for the Egyptians, as Sethe and others have pointed out, the wise priest, that is a priest truly initiated into the Wisdom, was regarded as an incarnation of Thoth, and such an one after the death of his body was worshipped as Thoth.
And so we find at Medinet Habu the remains of a shrine, erected in the time of Ptolemy IX. (Euergetes II. )—146-117 BC. —to a certain High Priest of Memphis, Teos, who is called “Teos the Ibis, ” 1 that is Thoth, and so identified with Thoth himself.
What we learn from the general tradition of this belief in the “incarnation” of Thoth into the perfected disciple of Wisdom, and the ascription of sacred literature to similar though not identical God-names to that of Thoth himself, is that there was on the one
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hand a firm belief in the unity of the Thoth-tradition, and on the other a necessary division of the sacred literature into older and later periods. The Thoth of the older period was regarded as a God, the Thoth of more recent times as a God-man. 1 And so we find Plato in the famous passage of the Philebus, 18 B, uncertain whether to speak of Thoth as God or man.
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