The Land of Pharoahs | Egyptian Cosmology

Know thyself. These words, apart from being a Socratic philosophic maxim, were inscribed on the temple of Apollo in the famous Greek precinct of Delphi, known for being the center of the world to the Greeks and the house of the high priestess and oracle for Apollo. But know thyself appeared much earlier in other forms, not in Greece but in ancient Egypt, for an inscription on the temple at Luxor reads, roughly, Man, know yourself and you shalt know the gods. And with a second look at anything from the Egyptian king lists or the numerous efforts to redate structures such as the pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx, the argument can be made now with more strength than ever before that Egypt was the earliest civilization we know of to have a religion. That is, to have gods and goddesses, initiation rituals, holidays, spiritual beliefs, and a rich environment of philosophic and moral education. And it should fall to any student of the biblical book of Genesis to collect at least a surface-level understanding of the Egyptian creation myth, as it comes down to us through their papyri, hieroglyphic translations, and the Greek historians who did much to capture the Egyptian traditions at points perhaps still early enough to catch an echo of their genuine doctrines. As we will see, the situation in Egypt cannot be generalized by one theology or one reference. There is no chance that a single creation story can be posited for all of ancient Egypt, given that their civilization existed for over three thousand years and had multiple cosmologies. Egypt also went through numerous takeovers that threatened their religious records throughout history, as in the case of the Nubians, the Akkadians, Persians, Greeks, and the Romans who had come in and perhaps gradually eroded pieces of the authentic teachings we are still trying to get our hands on. The sheer loss of so much writing hasn't helped in this effort. That said, we do have sources that paint a similar mosaic. E. A. Wallace Budge was a British Egyptologist and Orientalist in the late 1800s and early 1900s, who published many books about the Near Eastern and Egyptian religions at a time when the British Museum was being inundated with new Egyptian materials. Greek historians such as Herodotus Plutarch, Theodorus Siculus, and others will also be consulted. Our purpose is also to familiarize ourselves with certain archetypes and thematic roots of cosmology that sing from different voices but echo in the same chamber, no matter the difference of time or culture they were composed in. Egypt is important in this regard because it seems to have been resilient to foreigners and maintained extremely old teachings from start to finish. So how can we construct a synthesis of ancient cosmology, tell the overarching story, and get underneath the roots of the similarities spread across vast geographic distances? Well, we have to start at the beginning. Dynastic Egypt begins around 3000 BC, when Egypt is understood to be developing their writing systems. There was the hieroglyphic, carved or painted on stone, and the hieratic, cursive and less pictorial, reserved for more literary and religious texts, usually written on papyrus. It isn't until around 700 BC that the Demotic script emerged to become the choice for all bureaucratic writing. But today of all times in history, we are confronted with the pre-dynastic mystery. We know from Herodotus, the so-called father of history, writing in the 5th century BC, that the Egyptians didn't reckon their beginning like many Egyptologists do today. Instead, the Egyptian priests that Herodotus came in contact with stretched the lineage of Egyptian pharaohs back to more than 10,000 years ago. Theodorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BC, reports the same. For pre-dynastic Egyptians, there are two paths of early religious concepts we should keep in mind. One, that teachings from another civilization, like the one that may have built the pyramids and the sphinx long before the dynastic period began, came into Egypt and brought a long list of practices that were syncretized and merged into the native Egyptian teachings. Our second option is to doubt that there was ever a pre-dynastic movement of high technology and lost spiritual teachings, and carry on with the idea that the Egyptian natives gradually developed, blossoming the complicated system we see today, separating into provinces and swarming with gods and rituals, myths and disembodied beings. This being the version of Egypt the Greeks knew on the surface and became enamored with. Like the Greek historian Plutarch tells us, and the most wise of the Greeks also are witnesses, Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and some say Lycurgus as well, came into Egypt and learned from its priests. Right at the outset of Egyptian records, we do not see a society struggling to assign spiritual forces to every aspect of their world, but rather filling it with countless divine beings in the categories of sun gods, moon gods, earth and star gods, the guardian deities of the cities, gnomes, or provinces, the gods of wisdom, death, truth, astronomy, mathematics, and so on. Gods visualized in the form of animals or taking a therianthropic character, and coupled with this plethora of gods was a system of magical formulas, ritualistic operations, and a strong conviction in life after death, a life that in the Egyptian case sounds familiar to the life you already live. Egyptians in this way were not estranged from the theme of reincarnation. Now due to the wide range of beliefs and time that fit into any general study of Egypt, we're also focusing on the accessible stories that survived through the Greeks, who seem to have brushed shoulders with enough of the Egyptian priests to capture an air of a more ancient belief, which many scholars and mystics have sought out obsessively, mostly because of the undeniable presence of pyramids and megalithic structures, and because some of these, like the Sphinx in particular, were clearly built prior to dynastic Egypt. We cannot know what the Egyptian believed over the entire course of their history. This kind of oversimplicity isn't the friend of historical investigation. When elements of Egyptian religion are mentioned, we can't assume that all people were their keepers. There are no doubt certain recorded facts about Egyptian life, but through the 5,000 years of development, perhaps most every theological belief we could imagine existed in their provinces. There were doubtless immigrations into Egypt from other parts of the world, and this fact will magnify once the established date of the Egyptian megaliths get pushed back even further. We need only look at the structures being uncovered in Turkey, such as Gobekli Tepe and Kuran Tepe, right now to see how a few new archaeological findings can change everything we know about the beginning of agriculture and civilization. So, if the religious models of the Western Hemisphere had any center points, Egypt is certainly one of them. It sat at the very start of humanity's religious development. As we will find, there is much indication that the Egyptians already possessed the concept of, maybe not monotheism, but definitely a greater and singular god resting at the beginning of the world, which the priestly class and the temple initiates might be more inclined to study. The pharaoh was required to be initiated in the state mysteries, after all. If found incapable of performing the requisite actions, he or she would be proven inadequate for rule. It is understood that Egypt operated as a theocracy, a divine state wherein the ruler was, although their terminology is distinct from ours, a god on the earth. He was a representation in the lower worlds of a facilitating intelligence which worked through reality. As we know by the emphasis on their tombs and their mummification process, the Egyptians operated with a long tradition of ceremonies and funerary rites. The Egyptian afterlife appears to be no more than a change of states, a release from the body of current identity, and a judgment, a confrontation with the gods and the truth before entering the next version of life. Death, as we know it, didn't really have a place in the Egyptian system. If you committed falsehoods and sinned in this life, not even death allowed you to escape the retribution of the gods. Now, depending on the province that the Egyptians lived in, their gods and theologies would have been distinct to the locality. Thus, wherever you worshipped, you would be affected by the stories of that particular pantheon. In Thebes, for instance, during the 11th dynasty or around 1980 BC, we find Amun, the king of the gods, merging with Ra, the sun god, in Amun-Ra. In his own right, Ra is essential to the eventual Osirian takeover and may be one of the greatest and oldest gods of Egypt. When Ra was first manifested out of the darkness and the primeval ocean, he arose out of an island and created Shu, representing dryness and air, and Tefnut, representing humidity. These gods generated the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. In turn, Geb and Nut give birth to Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, and Set. Typical of ancient Egyptian deities, Ra took on many monikers during the thousands of years of his development, eventually being depicted as Ra-Harkati and falcon-headed through his association with Horus. Ra is considered the father of Maat and therefore is the very source of truth and justice. Not only were the deified pharaohs of Egypt made into mortal sun gods in their connection with Horus, but other sun gods like Amun emerged to rival Ra's influence, and with the pharaoh Akhenaten during his seventeen years as pharaoh beginning around 1353 BC, another solar religion emerged to compete in the eyes of history. Akhenaten is credited with the creation of the so-called first monotheistic religion of Egypt, Atenism, which revolved around the sun god Aten, depicted as a solar disk emitting rays of light. With the worship of Aten, the old traditions that required a plentitude of gods were threatened by a single pharaoh's urge to unify them into a single being. Now, why so many gods? For starters, let's consider the Egyptians' various phases of sun worship that moved beyond the designation of one or two gods, and recognized, at different times of the day, different features of the same presence. Harpocrates, Horus, or Kepri, in this case, represented the rising sun, whereas Ra was the sun at high noon, and Atum or Osiris, the elder, was the god at sunset. It was also pointed out by writers like J. Norman Lockyer that the title of the god changed depending on the respective season, becoming either Amun-Ra, Sebek-Ra, or Chemnu-Ra. In his book The Dawn of Astronomy, the English astronomer documents a number of Egyptian hymns to the sun gods taken from their monuments. From the hymn to Horus, O Horus of the horizon, There is none other beside thee, Protector of millions, Deliverer of tens of thousands. And the hymn to Ra, O Ra and thine egg, Radiant in thy disk, Shining forth from the horizon, Swimming over the steel firmament, To Mu and Horus of the horizon Pay homage to thee in all their words. Now we see this egg come into the Egyptian cosmology with some frequency. More evidence for this can be found on the tomb of Petosiris in a necropolis of the city of Hermopolis, discovered in 1919 and probably built around the 4th century BC. Here we find inscriptions of a high priest of Thoth, who makes reference to a core belief of the ancient Egyptians, namely that every Egyptian temple was symbolic of the place of creation. This high priest of Thoth speaks of building a house of the goddess, saying, For it is the birthplace of every god who came into being from the beginning. And for half the egg is buried in it. And for the hymn to Osiris, O Osiris, thou art the youth at the horizon of heaven daily, and thine old age at the beginning of all seasons. The ever-moving stars are under obedience to him, and so are the stars which set. When the light was no more, gods of darkness reigned, and Osiris performed his nightly combat with Set in the Egyptian underworld, or the Duat. When the god of light was victorious, he arose the following morning, providing quite naturally an early narrative for the immortality of the soul. Beyond the symbolic function of the Egyptian deities and their relationship to the placement of the sun and the stars, we are further impelled to notice the astro-theology in the layout of their temples. Whether it be the building plans corresponding to the suns rising at the equinoxes, like the pyramids at Giza, Memphis, Tanis, Sais, or Bubastis, or the ones that corresponded to the sun rising and setting at the solstices, like the temples at Karnak, we can find plenty of examples to lend credit to the equinoctial and solstitial building plans, of a quality perhaps only put to shade by the Olmecs, Aztecs, and Mayans of Central America. However, to mark an equinox or solstice wouldn't have required the level of astronomical knowledge that, say, lining up the three pyramids of Giza to the constellation of Orion's belt would have. So that is a lot to look into, but with this broad stroke of Egyptian complexity and bearing in mind some of the cosmological themes we discussed with the Book of Genesis, let's consult E. A. Wallace Budge in his Volume One of The Gods of the Egyptians, and before we see his selected papyrus for the creation myth, we'll take something of a warning from him. The custom of relying absolutely upon the information about the ancient Egyptian religion and mythology, which is reported by Greek historians, was abandoned by Egyptologists long ago, for as soon as the native Egyptian religious texts could be read, it became evident that no Greek or Latin writer had any exact first-hand knowledge of these subjects, and that none of them succeeded wholly in reproducing, accurately in their works, the facts concerning The only beliefs of the Egyptian religion which the educated Greek or Roman truly understood were those which characterized the various forms of Aryan religion, namely the polytheistic and the solar, were the forms of the cults of the dead and for all the religious ceremonies and observances which presupposed a belief in the resurrection of the dead and an everlasting life and which had been in existence among the indigenous inhabitants of northeast Africa from pre-dynastic times, he had no regard whatsoever. Now this is generally true for the Greek historians, but would not necessarily be true for some later Greek-speaking philosophers who had access to the hermetic literature that, as we have seen with the recent publication of New Conversations in the House of Life, does have unquestionable similarities with genuine Egyptian priestly writings. And if we are to entertain the notion that the mystery cults that spread around the Mediterranean had their origins in Egypt, then we could argue that the Greek initiates of Eleusis and Samothrace and so on did possess some original Egyptian theology. But another warning from Budge points out that even Egyptian scribes in many cases were unable to accurately convey many facts connected with their mythology. And who could blame them? He says that royal scribes under the new empire 1700-700 BC were unable to correctly read the names of their own kings in the archaic period 3100-2686 BC. Sufficing to say that for the Greeks as for us today, it's going to be difficult to hack through all the deific weeds and pluck out the lotus flower. The sheer number of gods in Egypt in 3600 BC was already substantial and multiplied from there on. How could we ask the Egyptians to understand so much of so many gods and their creation over this long a period? During the pre-dynastic period there appears to be a god for every village and city, every gnome, which reminds us of the Greeks who named their city of Athens after Athena, a goddess some Greek historians claimed was interposed into Greece from Egypt, taking on a form of the Egyptian goddess Isis. Couple this with the challenge of separating the religion of the priestly class with that of their husbandmen and you enter yet another gate of respective unknowns. For as Budge points out, but if we examine the religious text carefully it will be seen that the Egyptians were always trying to reduce the number of their gods, or in other words, were always advancing from polytheism to monotheism. The priesthood and the educated classes must have held religious views which were not absolutely identical with those of the peasant who cultivated the fields. The uneducated people of the country clung with great tenacity to the ordinary methods of celebrating their worship, principally because the frequent festivals and the imposing ceremonies, which formed a large and important part of it, were regarded as essential for their general well-being. The priests and the educated, on the other hand, clung to them because their influence was not sufficiently powerful to establish a popular form of religion and worship which would be consistent with their own private views. Every change which can be traced in the religion of the country proves that the priesthoods of the various great religious sinners absorbed into the new systems whenever possible the ancient gods and the ancient beliefs in them. Hence, during the period of the highest culture in Egypt, we find ideas of the grossest kind jostling ideas which were the product of great intellectuality and much thinking. This is a priceless passage because we know many Greek intellects were somewhat appalled by the Egyptian animal worship, or zootheism, and the superstitious reverence they animated the world with. The Egyptians were said to be terrified by tombs at night, for instance, reminding us of how the Sumerians and Babylonians had utterly nightmarish views about disembodied demons and the ways in which these ghosts could parasitically feed on their sins. Now we could spend years on the Egyptian customs and variation of worship, but let's focus on the creation myth, which Budge sets up as follows. We owe our knowledge of these things to a papyrus preserved in the British Museum, which was written for a priest of Panopolis of high rank and lineage, called Nes-Amsu or Nes-Men during the thirteenth year of the reign of Alexander the son of Alexander, or about 312 BC. Now in this papyrus there are two accounts of creation, so for simplicity we'll focus on the first one. Here is the history of the creation of the gods and the world in the Nes-Amsu papyrus. I am he who came into being in the form of Kepri. I was the creator of what came into being, the creator of what came into all. After my coming into being, many were the things which came into being coming forth from my mouth. Not existed heaven, not existed earth, not had been created the things of the earth, and creeping things in place that I raised them from out of primeval abyss or waters, from a state of inactivity. Not found I a place I could stand wherein. I worked a charm upon my heart, I laid a foundation in Ma, I made every attribute. I was alone, for not had I spit in the form of Shu, not had I emitted Tefnut, not had existed another who worked with me. I made a foundation in my heart my own, and there came into being the multitude of things which came into being and so on. I, even I, had union with my clenched hand, I joined myself in an embrace with my shadow, I poured seed into my own mouth my own, I sent forth issue in the form of Shu, I sent forth moisture in the form of Tefnut. Saith my father Nu, they make to be weak my eye behind them, because for double periods they proceeded from me after I became from God one God's three, that is, from out of myself, and after I came into being in earth. Shu and Tefnut were raised up in the inert watery mass wherein they were, brought they to me my eye in their train. After therefore I had united my members, I wept over them, and came into being men and women from the tears which came forth from my eye, and it raged against me after it came and found that I had made another in its place. I endowed it with the power which I had made, having made to approach therefore its place in my face, afterwards therefore it ruleth earth this to its whole extent. Fall their seasons upon their plants, I endowed it with what it hath taken possession of in it, I came forth from the plants creeping things all, things which came into being all in them. Give birth Shu and Tefnut and Nut, give birth Seb and Nut to Osiris, Hors Kent Anmati, Set, Isis, Nephthys from the womb, one after the other of them, they give birth and multiply on the earth. Now with a mangled English translation like this, it can be a lot at once. In the first place, we'll define the gods that we're dealing with. Kepri is known as the creator god, not unlike Atum in different versions, or even Ta. This initial creator god is self-created, and self-generates the gods Shu and Tefnut by a kind of spit and masturbation. Shu represents the primordial abyss, space if you will, or emptiness and potential, perhaps even the spirit of the creator. Tefnut is the first moist principle, the watery substance. Nut is a sky goddess, a goddess of the heavens. Seb or Geb is the earth god, twin of Nut, and often portrayed with the head of a snake or a goose. Osiris is their first son, son of the earth and sky, master of the underworld and the afterlife. Next we have Horus, who is here given before Set and Isis and Nephthys, but in other places is given after. Horus is associated with the pharaohs of Egypt as Osiris's earthly representative. Later we see Horus becoming the son of Isis and Osiris, and the opposition of Set. Set or Seth is the brother of Osiris, god of protection in some cases, and of natural events like thunder, eclipses, and earthquakes. Isis is the sister and wife of Osiris, and has a range of powers like magic and healing. Nephthys is the sister of Isis, wife to Set, and is often seen as barren and unfertile. With this let's go back to the translation where it reads, I was the creator of what came into being, the creator of what came into all. After my coming into being, many were the things which came into being coming forth from my mouth. This shows us the solitude of the creator god, and in a way the singularity at the beginning of things. And just like God says in the book of Genesis, so too does this creation process come forth from the mouth of Kepri. And then not existed heaven, not existed earth, not had been created the things of the earth, and creeping things in place that I raised them from This reminds us of Genesis when God first creates the earth without form, when there was darkness on the face of the deep. And then I made a foundation in my heart my own, and there came into being the multitudes of things which came into being. I, even I, had union with my clenched hand, joined myself in an embrace, with my shadow I poured seed into my mouth my own, I sent forth issue in the form of shoe, I sent forth moisture in the form of tefnut. So this is similar to how God in Genesis calls his creation good, so does the Egyptian creator create from his heart, and lay a foundation in Ma, most likely Maat, or the Egyptian goddess of truth and justice. The next passage is pretty bizarre because it implies a masturbation to birth shoe and tefnut, and here we get the mention of the moist principle, which becomes very important in other cosmologies. We also have the same bringing forth and coming into being of life forms in this early stage of development where the earth isn't yet made. Seb, like the earth in Genesis, isn't in physical form yet before the earth is populated with life forms. Now after shoe and tefnut are made we find I became from God one God's three, that is from out of myself. Then the God weeps and man and woman come into being. I don't yet know what to make of the next part, and it raged against me after it came and found that I had made another in its place. I endowed it with the power which I had made, having made to approach therefore its place in my face. Afterwards therefore it ruleth earth, this to its whole extent. And of course like the God's creation of man in Genesis, to have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth, so does this papyrus have the God saying, it ruleth over earth to its whole extent. So at the very basic level of this translation we can find similarities with the book of Genesis. You will find also that there are a number of alternatives to this where the gods have different names, but for the most part these are the first gods and this represents one of the choice cosmologies coming out of Egypt. Here is another interesting translation from Professor Spiegelberg, a German Egyptologist. This is a prayer to the god Ta, given in his alternate form of Tatanon at the time of Ramses III, or 1233 BC, cited by J. R. S. Mead in his book Thrice Greatest Hermes. Hail to thee, thou art great, thou art old, Tatanon, father of gods, god ancient from the beginning, who fashioned men, who fashioned gods, who began with the creator as the first creator, who created for all who came after him. We made the heaven, as his heart created it, who hanged it up, and god Shu raised himself, who founded the earth of thy own power, who circled the primal water of the great ocean, who created the invisible world, which brings the dead bodies to rest, who let Ra come to make them glad, as prince of eternity, lord of eternity, lord of life, who fills the lungs with air, who gives breath to every nostril, who vivifies all beings with his gifts. Length of life, fortune, and fate are subject unto him. They live by that which goeth forth from his own mouth, who made contentment for the gods, in his form of ancient primal water, lord of eternity, to whom eternity is subject, breath of life for all beings. This is thematically on the same lines as what we read before, with differences in timeline and deities according, perhaps, to the priesthood giving this prayer, or the province they prayed in. Budge also tells that Tatanon is elsewhere symbolized by a fire-spitting serpent armed with a knife. Now let's jump ahead in time to the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, a Syrian-born philosopher writing in the late 3rd century AD, who gives us a late antiquity point of view that is in line with the prayer to Ta and the Nessamsu papyrus. The Egyptians are far from ascribing all things to physical causes. Life and intellect they distinguish from physical being, both in man and the universe. They place intellect and reason first as self-existent, and from those they derive the created world. As parent of generated things, they constitute a demiurge, and acknowledge a vital force both in the heavens and before the heavens. They place pure intellect above and beyond the universe, and another, consisting of one continuous mind pervading the universe and apportioned to all its parts and spheres. Iamblichus sounds pretty close to this more ancient Egyptian narrative, positioning a reasoning intelligence at the start of creation, that existed on its own and gave birth in itself to all other lifeforms that followed. This right here is why we can't discount a kind of monotheism sneaking at the forefront of Egypt's polytheistic tendencies. As Herodotus tells us about the priests, they said, moreover, that the Egyptians were the first who brought into use appellations for the twelve gods, and the Greeks took up the use for them. So we've touched on two creations from older sources. Now we'll glance at Plutarch and review some of his more interesting passages in his work Isis and Osiris. Plutarch lived from 46 to 119 AD and was a famous Greek historian and biographer, a middle Platonist who was also a priest at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He was born to a wealthy family in the town of Chaeronea. Plutarch wrote many works such as The Parallel Lives and Moralia. He was most certainly familiar with, if not himself initiated, into the mystery religions of his day. We should remember that Plutarch referenced many texts and writers that are now lost to history, making him one of the more important literary sources on Egyptian mythology as it was understood at the turn of the millennia. Often he will mention how greater principles are clouded behind the public-facing mythology. Quote, Whenever you hear the traditional tales which the Egyptians tell about the gods, their wanderings, dismemberments, and many experiences of this sort, you must not think that any of these tales actually happened in the manner in which they are related. This is in keeping with the Pythagorean tale and the general presence of initiatory rituals that priests or regular civilians had to undertake in the ancient world in order to be given the inner secrets of a given religion. Long before Plutarch, Pythagoras in the is known to have traveled to Egypt to learn from their priest. Why would he have done this? Well, if Egypt is the source of spiritual wisdom, we're making it out to be, and their gods took on different forms over time and affected the Greek pantheon, then it would make sense for Pythagoras, like many other Greeks, to travel out to Egypt. Again from Plutarch, The exploits of the giants and titans celebrated among the Greeks, the lawless deeds of Cronus, the flights of Dionysus, and the wanderings of Demeter, do not fall at all short of the exploits of Osiris and Typhon and other exploits which anyone may hear freely repeated in traditional story. Later, so too all the things which are kept always away from the ears and eyes of the multitude by being concealed behind mystic rites and ceremonies have a similar explanation. Herodotus also mentions such secret rites when he visited Egypt centuries before Plutarch, and began to point out the similarities between Greek and Egyptian gods. One kind of similarity lies in the human-like functionality of the second grade of gods in both pantheons. As Plutarch says, quote, one of the first acts related of Osiris in his reign was to deliver the Egyptians from their destitute and brutish manner of living. This he did by showing them the fruits of cultivation, by giving them laws, and by teaching them to honor the gods. Later he traveled over the whole earth civilizing it without the slightest need of arms. So this sounds more like a conquering ruler or a kind of prophet-king than an immaterial god, which may be why Plato thought these tales were of neither gods nor men, but demigods, those above common humanity in skill and lifespan. Because gods wouldn't assume an anthropomorphic identity so much as an omnipresent force of life or an intelligence which performs a specific task in nature. Back to Herodotus, quote, now then the Egyptians are supposedly the first men who formed a conception of the gods, established sanctuaries and sacred precincts, and instituted festivals. They were also the first to conceive of holy names and to tell sacred tales. Not long afterwards the Assyrians heard an account about gods from the Egyptians and they established sanctuaries and temples in which they placed images and set up statues. So we can't pretend that as far back as our literary sources exist there wasn't a comparative analysis going on. To look at another interesting and less known figure we turn to considered both a Pythagorean and a forerunner of Neoplatonism. From the scarce fragments that remain of his writings it would appear that Numenius, writing in the 2nd century, was trying to bridge the knowledge gaps between Plato and Pythagoras and put these doctrines at peace with the lands around him. This alone says something considerable about the man, but it is quite difficult to judge his entire body of work from the few fragments that live on from the commentaries of Eusebius Porphyry and Origen. Numenius quote, but when one has spoken upon this point and sealed it by the testimonies of Plato, it will be necessary to go back and connect it with the precepts of Pythagoras and to appeal to the nations of good repute, bringing forward their rites and doctrines and their institutions which are formed in agreement with those of Plato, all that the Brahmins and Jews and Magi and Egyptians arranged. Now do we have examples, Numenius, of a sect who attempted to synchronize such separate beliefs into one coherent system? Well, let's look at the report given on the Nacenes by the Christian heresiologist Hippolytus at the start of the 3rd century. Hippolytus provides indispensable information relative to the eclectic mysticism of various Gnostic communities. Remember, the Gnostic movement was not a religion itself. The term comprises a variety of alternative belief systems with the core themes explored by Jesus Christ at its roots. However, their understanding of the story of Jesus went far afield from that of the gospel as interpreted by the church. The Nacenes, one of these sects, were relentlessly comparing and paralleling certain mythologies into a symphony from which their doctrinal momentum was sustained. In particular, the themes of Adonis, Demeter, and Persephone, the Great Mother, that of Isis and Osiris, and the castration of Attis provided much of the foundation of their discipline. The Nacenes took an approach of sexual abstinence without the unnatural savagery of castration. Like the general dualistic theme in Gnosticism, that matter was source of all impurities and evil, they procured a belief of their own to deal with the problems of physical obscuration. In connection not only to Attis, but possibly to the 14th piece of Osiris, the phallus, the only piece of the 14 which Isis could not recover, they held the opinion that by severing the masculine bond towards the earth, maintained in the sexual energies, a thread could be weaved with higher and refined heavenly powers. For man, says Hippolytus, they say is bisexual, so in accordance with this thought of theirs, the intercourse of woman with man is in their teaching shown to be most wicked and prohibited. And not only the mysteries of the Assyrians and Phrygians, but also those of the Egyptians, they say, confirm their thought about the blessed nature, concealed and yet disclosed, of what has come to pass and what comes to pass and what will come to pass, which he says is the kingdom of heaven within man to be sought after. This isn't the only example, I think, of some borrowings from Egypt that you might find interesting. The primary Jewish historian himself, Josephus, writing in the first century, appears to borrow an Egyptian tradition and cloak it in the Hebrew, when he says of the people of Adam that, quote, they also were the inventors of that particular sort of wisdom which is concerned with the heavenly bodies and their order, and that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and at another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made two pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone, they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar or brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind, and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Well, we know that in Josephus' day the Egyptians were credited with recording the heavenly bodies and coming up with the calendar through the deity Thoth, just like the Sumerians are credited with a brand of astrology. We know that the early Jewish tradition stems from the same historical undertones as the Sumerian and Egyptian, that perhaps were separated in a Tower of Babel-like situation, when the alleged universal language of the world was said to be divided into many. Now turning to another reference of Egypt playing a role in origins of Greek religion, we're going to look at another Greek historian, Theodorus Siculus, who wrote in the first century BC, and to offer some perspective on the general confusion about the gods, Theodorus says, in general there is great disagreement over these gods, for the same goddess is called by some Isis, by others Demeter, by others Thesmorphus, by others Selene, by others Hera, while still others apply to her all these names. Another passage from Theodorus encapsulates some of this universalism. He tells us about Estella in Nysa in Arabia, that bears hieroglyphic inscriptions that say, quote, I am Isis, the queen of every land, she who was instructed of Hermes, and whatsoever laws I have established, these can no man make void. I am eldest daughter of the youngest god Cronus. I am the wife and sister of the king Osiris. I am she who first discovered fruits for mankind. I am mother of Horus the king. I am she who rises in the star that is in the constellation of the dog. By me was the city of Bubastis built. Farewell, farewell, O Egypt that nurtured me. And on the stele of Osiris we find, quote, I am Osiris the king, who campaigned over every country as far as the uninhabited regions of India and the lands to the north, even to the sources of the river Ister, and again to the remaining parts of the world as far as Oceanus. I am the eldest son of Cronus, and being spring from a fair and noble egg, I was begotten a seed of kindred birth to-day. There is no region of the inhabited world to which I have not come, dispensing to all men the things of which I was the discoverer." To close here, Theodorus goes on to recount that more is known about these kinds of tellings, but the priests are not willing to divulge these truths to the public, on the grounds that perils overhang any men who disclose to the common crowd the secret knowledge about the gods. Again we're confronted with the secretive nature of the mysteries, which reminds us of Jesus when he says not to cast pearls before swine, or the Pythagorean maxims that imply the same, or the many other quotes from the Greeks that allude to the secrecy of the initiates bearing upon their rituals. Now this meandering through the voices of the past, pulling from this or that text, might seem like the rustic whims of antiquity, being sifted through a filter of comparative religion, but really this kind of thread tying between the gods, as we have shown, was more prevalent than one might expect. Not the reductive attitude of later scholars, nor the biases of certain priests like we see in some of the early Christians, have done much to explain the similarities between the gods of different peoples around the Mediterranean and beyond. The writers of this time had many disagreements as far as who borrowed from whom, like the church father Clement of Alexandria, for instance, but nonetheless a great deal of borrowing is implied. It is the methods of borrowing, interposing or syncretizing, that are still something of a testier question, one which can't be answered just by quoting Herodotus and pointing out that comparative analyses were already being conducted in antiquity. For now we leave Egypt as it stands, a country once called Kemet, or the Black Land, and with their basic cosmology in mind we will move on to explore the classic Greek creation myths and continue in our overview of analyzing the birth of the universe around the ancient Mediterranean.